Russian Major General Anton Grunis, the commander who told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russian forces had fully captured Kostiantynivka despite Ukrainian troops still defending the city, has been killed in the war against Ukraine, according to Russian media reports.

Grunis was awarded the Hero of Russia title just weeks before his death, after commanding Russian forces on the Kostiantynivka front. He had reported the city’s supposed capture to Putin in July, even as Ukrainian forces continued to hold positions there.

Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS), confirmed Grunis’s death on 16 September, saying Ukrainian forces killed the general on 12 September in occupied Donetsk Oblast.

Madyar said the operation was carried out by the “Rarog” unit of Ukraine’s 427th Separate Regiment of Unmanned Systems. 

Several Russian sources have also confirmed Grunis’s death, according to Ukrainska Pravda and RBC-Ukraine.

Madyar said Grunis is the seventh confirmed Russian commander at the brigade, division, or army level killed by Ukraine’s SBS “Birds” units.

The general who declared Kostiantynivka captured

Grunis commanded Russia’s 4th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, which has been fighting on the Kostiantynivka front, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

In July, Grunis personally reported to Putin that Russian forces had supposedly fully captured Kostiantynivka. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov made a similar claim.

Ukraine rejected the announcement, saying its troops were still conducting defensive operations inside the city. Kostiantynivka remains contested as of 16 September.

RBC-Ukraine reported that Russian troops have entered parts of the city, but Ukrainian forces continue to hold positions in its southern, central, and northern areas. Ukraine’s General Staff reported 18 Russian attacks on the Kostiantynivka axis over the previous day.

Kostiantynivka is the southernmost major city in Ukraine’s fortified defensive belt in Donetsk Oblast, with Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk farther north. Russia has been trying to capture it since 2025.

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Killed weeks after receiving Hero of Russia title

Grunis was awarded Russia’s highest state decoration shortly before his death. On 27 August, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov presented him with the Gold Star of the Hero of the Russian Federation for what Russia described as his “courage and heroism,” according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Grunis graduated from the Kazan Suvorov Military School in 1996 and fought in Chechnya and against Georgia, Ukrainska Pravda reported. He retired from active service in 2021 but returned to the Russian military after the start of the full-scale invasion.

The 4th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade was formed in 2014 from Russian-backed armed formations in occupied Luhansk, including the Prizrak group, before being integrated into Russia’s regular military structure, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

A Russian drone struck a scheduled passenger minibus in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the morning of 16 September, killing and injuring people on board, the oblast military administration reported. The vehicle was running an intercity route when the drone reached it on the open road. Prosecutors opened a criminal case, and the head of the oblast council called the attack a cynical strike on people going about their day.

Five killed on the Pokrov to Dnipro run

Five people died at the scene, and doctors are treating at least seven injured, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Handzha, said. Russian forces struck Nikopol district with an FPV drone, damaging a route minibus that was travelling on the highway, the Prosecutor General's Office said.

Mykola Lukashuk, who heads the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Council, wrote that the strike was aimed and cynical.

"Russians cynically struck a passenger bus. Just a minibus in which people were travelling on their own business," he wrote.

The photograph Handzha published shows the windows torn out along one side of the white van, with blood running down the panel below them. In Lukashuk's image of the front end, the destination board behind the cracked windshield reads Pokrov, via Nikopol, to Dnipro, three towns strung along the same road.

The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which covers violations of the laws and customs of war, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

Drones had also attacked the district center and the Marhanets community in the same region, damaging an apartment building without hurting anyone, the administration said.

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Russia’s drone hits Nikopol bus mid-route: 3 dead, 12 injured at city-centre stop

Buses on these roads have been hit all year

Nikopol district lies on the Dnipro River directly across from Russian-occupied territory, which puts its roads inside the range of short-range drones. A drone hit a city bus in central Nikopol in April, killing four people and injuring 17, after which the mayor cut services and ran the rest off the fixed schedule. In June, a drone struck a minibus in Nikopol, killing two people and injuring 12, among them two 12-year-old girls, and in August a drone burned out another route minibus elsewhere in the district, injuring at least seven passengers.

The pattern runs past this district. A drone hit a bus near Dnipro in May, injuring six people including a child and a pregnant woman, and war analysts have assessed that Russian forces use harm to civilians as an instrument of the war in southern Ukraine rather than as its by-product. 

An FPV drone, short for first-person view, sends a live video feed back to whoever is flying it. The operator watches the target grow in the frame and steers the drone into it. A bus in motion is a target that has to be chosen and followed. FPV models are not the only cheap weapon over these roads: Russia also flies Molniya strike drones, which reach further and are switching to digital video that Ukraine's current detectors cannot pick up.

The Prosecutor General's Office documented more than 11,000 attacks by short-range drones on civilians, medics, rescuers, and police, with criminal cases rising from 2,427 in 2024 to 6,771 in 2025 and another 2,010 opened in the first four months of 2026.