Russian forces struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on the morning of 8 October, hitting two route buses carrying residents and killing dozens of civilians. The Donetsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened a war-crimes investigation.

Russia has turned everyday movement in frontline Donetsk Oblast into a lethal risk, striking city buses, ambulances, and cars in places its army has not been able to capture.

A route bus run turned deadly

The attack came at around 10:00, catching two route buses in the impact zone. The prosecutor's office said the attackers likely used a UMPB D-30SN. HUR, Ukraine's military intelligence, describes it as a guided glide bomb that can fly up to 100 km when released from an altitude of 12–15 km and carries a warhead equal to a FAB-250 aerial bomb.

The toll rose through the day, from 12 dead in the first reports to 30 killed and 20 wounded by 14:55, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Across Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed 33 people that day, including the 30 in Kramatorsk and three in nearby Bilenke, the State Emergency Service said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strike would not go unanswered.

Buses pulled off the roads

Filashkin ordered the Kramatorsk and Sloviansk city military administrations to suspend public transport, citing the sharp deterioration in security. Buses had become an attractive target for Russian forces, he said, and the authorities could not risk the lives of passengers and drivers. He also urged everyone still in Donetsk Oblast to leave for safer parts of Ukraine. Kramatorsk is a frequent target of Russian attacks. Russia had not commented on the strike as of publication.

The city has been under daily fire. On 5 October, Russian FPV drones hit ambulances and an apartment block in Kramatorsk, killing a woman and wounding four, the prosecutor's office reported. Over the previous day, Russian forces shelled Donetsk Oblast settlements 31 times and 256 people left the front line, Filashkin said.

A Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Pryluky, a town in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv Oblast, killed 22 people on 7 October, regional police reported on the morning of 8 October. Five of the dead were children: three one-year-old boys, an eight-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old girl, police said.

Russian strikes on Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, and Kyiv killed 28 people on 7 October, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. For the town, it was the second deadly missile strike since May. Behind the toll are families like this one: three generations hit by a single strike.

A family visit that ended under rubble

Three-year-old Zlatoslava is now in the Chernihiv Oblast children's hospital, Pryluky district police chief Vladyslav Stoianov told. Her mother, Kateryna, is hospitalized too. The two had come on the evening of 6 October to visit Kateryna's sister, police officer Yuliia Malysh. The girl's father stayed home in Lynovytsia, a village 15 km away.

Yuliia was wounded and is in hospital, Stoianov said. Her husband, Oleh Malysh, was killed. Until recently, Oleh had fought at the front in the Chernihiv Oblast police rifle battalion. The sisters' mother, Liudmyla, had also come over that evening, and she died too. All the family details come from Stoianov, who was describing a colleague's family.

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22 killed in Russian missile strike on Pryluky, including five children

Footage of an emergency worker carrying a little girl from the ruins reached almost all media, Vyhivskyi wrote in the same post. Suspilne first reported that the filmed rescuer had carried Zlatoslava. It then corrected itself: he had carried a different child, five-year-old Zoriana. Vyhivskyi also gives the girl's age as five, and he named the rescuer as State Emergency Service section commander Pavlo Levchenko. With colleagues, Levchenko freed the girl and her mother after the blast threw them out of the building.