A Russian air strike on two passenger buses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, killed at least 33 people and injured dozens more on Thursday, October 8, according to Ukrainian authorities. On the same day, a drone attack caused a fire and disrupted operations at a data centre operated by Russian technology company Yandex in the Ryazan region.
The strike in Kramatorsk hit a street near a public transport stop at around 10 a.m., setting buses on fire and scattering debris across the road, according to Ukrainian police and emergency services.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service initially reported 33 deaths and 18 injuries. Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin later said the number of injured people had risen to 19. Authorities suspended public transport in Kramatorsk and neighbouring Sloviansk following the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting civilians. He said medical teams were treating the injured, some of whom remained in critical condition.
“This strike will not go without our response. Russia is trying to destroy all life in Donbas, and the world needs to react to this,” Zelenskyy said in a statement published on Telegram.
Filashkin also accused Russian forces of deliberately striking buses carrying passengers. He condemned the attack as evidence of Moscow’s disregard for civilian lives.
Kramatorsk is one of the last two major cities in the northern Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control. Together with Sloviansk, it forms part of Ukraine’s defensive position against Russian forces seeking to capture the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in the region.
The latest attack came a day after a strike on an apartment building in Pryluky, northern Ukraine, killed at least 22 people, including five children.
Kyiv also came under Russian drone attack on Thursday. City mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that three people were killed and 14 injured.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 142 Shahed-type drones overnight, including 82 jet-powered variants. Ukrainian air defences reported intercepting or suppressing 126 of the drones.
While the attacks caused further casualties and disruption in Ukraine, a separate drone strike targeted a major technology facility inside Russia.
The attack hit a Yandex data centre in Sasovo, in Russia’s Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. Reports indicated that the strike caused a fire and forced the company to suspend operations at the facility.
Yandex confirmed disruptions to its cloud infrastructure and reported power supply problems affecting one of its availability zones. The company initially acknowledged an infrastructure incident but did not identify its cause.
Open-source monitoring groups Exilenova+ and ASTRA identified the affected site as Yandex’s Sasovo data centre. The facility houses tens of thousands of servers that support the company’s internet services and cloud computing operations.
The disruption raised concerns about the impact on Yandex’s digital infrastructure, although available reports did not indicate widespread failures across its main consumer platforms. Public outage trackers also showed no evidence of a broad breakdown of the company’s services.
The data centre is located within the industrial complex of Sasta, a machine-tool manufacturer whose equipment is used in Russian manufacturing, including the defence, aerospace and energy sectors.
Britain imposed sanctions on Sasta in 2024 over its involvement in Russia’s defence industry. Western restrictions on exports of advanced electronics to Russia could make replacing damaged equipment more difficult, although the extent of any damage to the data centre had not been publicly established.
Neither Russian regional authorities nor Ukraine’s military had publicly confirmed responsibility for the strike on the facility.
The two attacks highlighted the different targets affected by the conflict on Thursday, with civilian transport and residential areas struck in Ukraine while a major technology facility in Russia reported operational disruption. However, the circumstances surrounding the attack on the Yandex data centre, including who was responsible and the full extent of the damage, remained unclear.
