Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed that the attack “will not go unanswered” after photos posted by local authorities showed the burnt-out metal shell of the vehicles, with bodies and debris strewn across the road.
“Russia is trying to destroy all life in (the) Donbas (region) and the world must respond to this,” he wrote on Telegram, warning that the death toll could rise.
Police said the buses were hit with a glide bomb. Three more people were killed in a nearby village as a result of shelling, the emergency services said.
The strikes come just a day after five children were among 22 killed when a Russian missile flattened a five-storey apartment block in Pryluky, in the northern Chernigiv region.
“The Russians are deliberately targeting civilians,” Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said, accusing Moscow of flouting “every conceivable rule of warfare and norm of international humanitarian law”.
Kramatorsk City Council called it “yet another horrific crime committed by the Russian army against the civilian population”.
“Once again, the Russians have struck a location where there are absolutely no military targets,” it added.
Civilian Casualties
There has been mounting concern about the increase in civilian deaths and injuries in the nearly five-year conflict, as both sides step up long-range attacks beyond their borders.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has accused its forces of deliberately attacking and killing civilians.
The United Nations has verified more than 17,000 civilian deaths throughout the war but says the real number is considerably higher.
Last week, Zelensky said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had sanctioned massive attacks on civilian areas, a claim the Kremlin denies.
But touring the site of the Pryluky attack on Thursday, visiting UK foreign minister Ed Miliband said there was “no clearer sign of Putin’s evil, evil intent and strategy in this conflict”.
“Putin once said that he was going to win on the battlefield,” he told reporters, as London announced more sanctions on Moscow. “He is trying to win by terrorising civilians.”
Zelensky urged the United States to “raise the pressure” on Russia, including through providing better air defence systems, to force Putin to the negotiating table.
Security Worsened
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, has come under increasing attack, including on Wednesday from a barrage of Russian ballistic and cruise missiles, and fast-moving, jet-powered drones.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said three people were killed and 14 wounded on Thursday alone.
Key transport bridges in the city, as well as the rail network and energy grid, have been hit.
For the first few years of the conflict, Kyiv had been relatively spared from the devastation wrought on the frontline but should now be on a war footing, he argued.
Kramatorsk, which was home to some 150,000 people before the war, is one of the key cities that Russia has not yet captured in the eastern Donetsk region, which Moscow claims as its own.
It has been a logistics and supply hub for the Ukrainian military for much of the war and is part of the so-called “fortress belt” which troops are fighting to keep hold of.
Russian forces have edged close to the city’s eastern fringes, which has prompted calls for the civilians who remain to relocate to safer regions of Ukraine.
Filashkin said Thursday’s strike represented a “sharp deterioration” in security and ordered the suspension of public transport in Kramatorsk and neighbouring Sloviansk.
Ukraine last month launched a counter-offensive against Russian troops around Lyman — to the north of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk — claiming some success in regaining pockets of territory.
AFP
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