Ukrainian Authorities Say Russian Strike on Two Buses in Kramatorsk Killed at Least 30; Pryluky Toll Reaches 22

Since Russia's barrage on Wednesday, Putin's 74th birthday, the death toll from the strike on a residential building in Pryluky has risen to 22 dead, including five children, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service. A second mass-casualty strike hit the Donetsk region on Thursday morning.

Kramatorsk bus strike

At least 30 people were killed and 18 injured when a Russian strike hit two public buses in Kramatorsk, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday. The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor's Office put the time of the attack at around 10 a.m. local time.

The Kramatorsk City Council said public transport in the city has been suspended. In a Telegram post, the council said: "Once again, the Russians have struck a location where there is definitely no military target. A public bus. Civilian transport. People who were simply going about their business."

Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin offered condolences to the families and said officials were still working out the full extent of the damage. He urged everyone still in the region to evacuate to safer parts of Ukraine.

Pryluky toll climbs

Rescuers kept searching the rubble in Pryluky, a town in the Chernihiv region about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Kyiv. The State Emergency Service said 54 people were injured in the strike, seven of them children. Rescuers pulled 15 survivors out in the immediate aftermath, including a child.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said a cruise missile hit the building directly. The strike was part of a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv and a dozen other regions.

"This is the kind of 'gift' Putin gave himself for his birthday," Zelensky said in his nightly address Wednesday. "The killing of children, the killing of people."

Kyiv hit again

Late Wednesday, drones struck two Kyiv districts, police said. In Obolonskyi, a drone hit a courtyard between apartment buildings, killing two people and injuring seven, including a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. In Desnianskyi, a drone hit a residential building, killing two women and injuring five, among them girls aged 1 and 6.

The attacks continued overnight. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 142 drones, and that as of 9:30 a.m. air defenses had shot down or neutralized 126 of them, Shahed and Gerber types among them. Strikes were recorded at seven locations. Sixteen drones were not stopped.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko first reported one dead and 11 injured in Thursday's attacks on the capital. He later said two bodies had been found after a drone hit a store in the Solomianskyi district. Two people were injured in the strike on the four-storey building. Search and rescue work there was ongoing.

Winter and the grid

Ukraine's energy company DTEK said the national grid operator Ukrenergo ordered emergency power outages in Kyiv. DTEK said these are separate from the regular rolling outages scheduled across the country and will not be applied during those shutdowns.

Zelensky warned that Russia will likely escalate its daily missile and drone attacks as winter approaches. That is a direct threat to heating and power for civilians.

The ground war, meanwhile, is largely deadlocked after more than 4 1/2 years of full-scale invasion. The fighting is now mostly a long-range aerial contest, in which Russia sends hundreds of drones and missiles at cities and Ukraine tries to knock down enough of them to keep the lights on. A 126-of-142 interception rate is solid. The ones that get through are landing on apartment blocks, courtyards and buses.

The Kramatorsk figures could still change as officials finish their count, and rescue crews in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district are still working. Filashkin's call for residents to leave the Donetsk region stands as the clearest sign of how local authorities rate the danger there.