4 days ago

James Chaterand

Henry Moore

Eight people have been killed and 10 others injured after a drone hit a passenger bus travelling through a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, Russia has said.

Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, said the bus was struck in the early hours of Wednesday as it was travelling between a city near Moscow and Simferopol, in Russian-annexed Crimea.

Russia has claimed the strike was by a Ukrainian drone. When asked by the BBC whether Kyiv was behind the attack, Ukraine's general staff did not confirm nor deny but said it would not comment "on statements made by the aggressor state".

In a Ukraine-held part of the Donetsk region, three people were killed and one injured in Russian shelling of the city of Kramatorsk, local official Vadym Filashkin said.

The attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown thousands of kilometres from Ukraine's border comes as St Petersburg hosts the annual International Economic Forum, an event designed to showcase Russia to the world. Putin is due to speak there on Friday.

The strikes come a day after a massive Russian assault on cities across Ukraine killed at least 22 people, including several women and children.

In Donetsk, Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal case into what they described as a "terrorist attack" on civilians.

Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee, said authorities were working to establish the identities of those responsible for the strike.

Fifty-three people had been registered to travel on the bus, Russia's state-run media report, however, none of the victims' identities have been released yet.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian government's centre for combating disinformation, has talked about a "parallel reality" created by Russian state propaganda, while not explicitly denying claims that the strike took place.

"Russia attacks civilians with drones all the time... of course, when everyone is talking about this, when there is evidence of such actions by the Russians, they use their main propaganda tool: creating a parallel reality," he told the BBC.

"Against this background of attacks on our civilians, they come up with stories in which Ukraine acts just like Russia. This is done to justify their own terror as a response to our actions."

Drones were downed over Belgorod, Kursk and other western regions, as well as near Moscow and over the Sea of Azov, Russian officials added.

In total, Russia says it shot down 350 Ukrainian drones overnight.

At least 50 of those were downed over the Leningrad region north-west of Moscow, according to the regional governor Alexander Drozdenko. St Petersburg is the capital of the region.

"Important facilities on Russian territory were hit last night," Zelensky wrote on X, sharing a video of black smoke rising above St Petersburg.

He described the strikes as "long-range sanctions" and said Ukrainian forces also hit military targets in Russia's Tambov region.

These overnight strikes saw St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport temporarily restrict flights, according to Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia.

Earlier, an 86-year-old woman was killed following a drone attack in Ukraine's southern Kherson region overnight, Yaroslav Shanko, head of the city's military administration said.

This came as part of a wider attack by Moscow overnight, with Ukraine's air force saying Russia launched 198 drones at several different regions, 189 of which were shot down.

The latest wave of strikes comes a day after Russia launched one of its largest attacks on Ukraine since its full-scale invasion began in 2022.

At least 22 people were killed after Russia launched more than 700 missiles and drones overnight into Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia's defence ministry said the strikes had been a response to previous Ukrainian attacks, saying in a statement that the "strike objectives" had all been achieved.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it was carrying out the "systematic strikes" it had pledged after accusing Kyiv of a deadly attack on a student dormitory in an occupied part of eastern Ukraine in late May.

Kyiv said it had hit a Russian military unit.

"This practice will continue," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, claiming the strikes were targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure.

Additional reporting by Vitaly Shevchenko.