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A Russian bomb tore through a street in the eastern Ukrainian stronghold of Kramatorsk on Thursday, killing at least 33 people and leaving 18 others wounded in one of the deadliest single attacks reported in Ukraine this year.
According to news agency Reuters, the strike hit an area where two city buses were operating, turning an ordinary stretch of the city into a scene of devastation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the location as a bus stop.
"For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible," regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram. Images released by Ukrainian police showed bodies lying amid scattered debris, while the blackened remains of a bus could be seen nearby.
Russia has repeatedly denied deliberately targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
KRAMATORSK BEARS BRUNT OF INTENSIFYING STRIKES
Kramatorsk is one of the key cities in the so-called "fortress belt" that forms the backbone of Ukraine's defences in the Donetsk region. Local officials say Russian forces have intensified drone and guided-bomb attacks on Kramatorsk and other cities in the area.
Moscow has demanded that Kyiv surrender the remaining parts of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control as part of any settlement to end the war. Ukraine has rejected the demand.
Despite the pressure, Russia's territorial advances in the region have slowed significantly this year. Following Thursday's attack, Filashkin ordered authorities in Kramatorsk and nearby Sloviansk, another strategically important city in the fortress belt, to suspend public transport.
"We have no right to risk" citizens' lives, Filashkin said.
The Kramatorsk attack came just a day after a major Russian air assault struck several parts of Ukraine, with the country's power grid among the main targets. The latest wave also reached Kyiv, where three people were killed and 14 wounded in drone strikes on Thursday morning, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Russian forces have repeatedly launched waves of drones and missiles against the Ukrainian capital, while Kyiv continues to grapple with shortages of air-defence systems.
DRONES HIT RUSSIAN DATA CENTRE
The escalation was not limited to Ukrainian territory.
On Thursday, drones struck a major data centre operated by Yandex, one of Russia's biggest technology and artificial intelligence companies, in what was described as the first major attack on a Russian data hub since the war began.
Yandex said the attack on its Sasovo facility caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site. The centre is one of the company's five large data hubs and houses tens of thousands of servers.
The company said it was working to restore affected services but did not disclose the full extent of the damage.
Yandex, often described as "Russia's Google", said its core consumer services had not been affected. Its Yandex Cloud service, however, warned customers that an electricity supply problem had affected one data-centre "zone" and advised them to switch to other zones.
DRONE WAR MOVES INTO DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Tit-for-tat drone attacks have increasingly reached deeper into the economies of both countries, hitting energy facilities, oil refineries, ports and vessels carrying oil and grain. E-commerce warehouses and now data centres have also been caught up in the expanding campaign.
Russia, for its part, has intensified attacks on Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications infrastructure over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv.
The damage has not stopped at shattered infrastructure. Ukrainian strikes have rippled through Russia's economy, fuelling petrol shortages, lengthening queues at filling stations and pushing up fuel prices.
Russia has also begun looking at ways to protect infrastructure that has become increasingly vulnerable to drone warfare. In August, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the state power to take control of critically important infrastructure if authorities determine that it is inadequately protected from drone attacks.
Russia's RBC news outlet reported on Thursday, citing sources, that businesses were discussing with the government the possibility of developing data centres in countries considered friendly to Moscow.
Ukraine has faced similar vulnerabilities. Some Ukrainian data centres have been forced to suspend operations after suffering damage, while one attack temporarily disrupted internet access for about 100,000 households.
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With inputs from agencies
