In a war that will go down in history for horrendous crimes and infamous images, this Thursday Russia blew up two buses full of civilians on one of the avenues of Kramatorsk, the capital of Donbass still controlled by Ukraine. Nearly five years ago, Vladimir Putin announced the start of his "Special Military Operation" to protect Russian speakers who, according to Russian propaganda, were being persecuted by the Kiev government. Today, the Kremlin has once again killed dozens of Russian speakers, who make up the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Eastern cities of the country.
The attack occurred a day after a missile killed five children and 17 adults by hitting an apartment building in Priluki, in the northern Chernihiv region. Photos released by local authorities showed the burnt metal bodies of the vehicles, with images of bodies torn apart by shrapnel and debris scattered on the road. The police indicated that the buses were hit by a glide bomb or guided bomb launched by the Russian aviation.
"The Russians are deliberately attacking civilians," claimed the governor of the eastern Donetsk region, Vadim Filashkin, who accused Moscow of violating "every rule of war and norm of international humanitarian law," as reported by the Efe agency.
The City Council of Kramatorsk described it as "another horrendous crime committed by the Russian army against the civilian population." "Once again, the Russians attacked a town where there is absolutely no military target," he added.
Kramatorsk, which had 150,000 inhabitants before the war, is one of the important cities that Russia has not captured in Donetsk, a region that Moscow considers part of its territory.
The UN has verified over 17,000 civilian deaths throughout the war, which began in February 2022 with the Russian invasion of the neighboring country. The world organization warned that the actual number is much higher. In the city of Mariupol alone, taken by the Russian army in the spring of 2022, there were many more than 17,000 civilian deaths.
Additionally, at least four people have died and twelve others have been injured in new Russian attacks on Kiev, according to the Ukrainian Police, while the capital has experienced emergency power outages. At the same time, Ukraine has targeted Russian infrastructure during the night, including a data center of the tech giant Yandex and a Gazprom refinery.
Two of the victims in Kiev died after a Russian drone fell between two residential buildings in the Obolon district, where seven other people were injured. In Desnianski, another drone hit a residence, causing the death of two women and injuries to five other people.
According to the Efe agency, the private energy company DTEK reported that emergency power outages had been implemented in the capital by order of Ukrenergo, the national electricity grid operator. Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, while Kiev tries to respond by targeting strategic facilities within Russian territory.
The new attacks come a day after an intense Russian onslaught that left at least 28 dead in different parts of Ukraine. In Priluki, in the Chernihiv region, 22 people died and 54 others were injured after a Kh-101 cruise missile struck a residential building. Among the deceased are five children, three of them just one year old, and rescue teams continue to work among the rubble in search of possible victims.
Back to this Thursday, in the Russian region of Ryazan, Ukraine attacked a Yandex data center in the town of Sasovo. The company confirmed an incident affecting part of its infrastructure, without specifying the causes, and stated that there were no casualties. According to independent Russian and Ukrainian media, the incident was related to a fire caused by a drone attack.
Ukraine also targeted a Gazprom refinery in Salavat, in the Bashkiria region, according to independent Russian media and bloggers. This marks the fourth attack on that facility since the start of the war.
The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that its anti-aircraft defenses intercepted and destroyed 399 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight over 20 Russian regions, the Crimea peninsula, and the Black Sea.