Russian drone hits passenger bus in Ukraine, killing five and injuring seven

A Russian drone struck a passenger bus in southern Ukraine, killing five people and injuring at least seven, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reported strikes on trains and rail infrastructure as Kyiv sought replacement locomotives from international partners

Kyiv: A Russian drone struck a passenger bus in southern Ukraine early Wednesday, killing five people and wounding at least seven. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack, the latest in a series of Russian strikes on civilian transportation, as an “atrocity.”

The strike occurred in the Nikopol district of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, near the war’s southern front line. Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said all five were killed at the scene while the seven wounded were receiving medical care.

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In a post on social media platform X, Zelenskyy described the vehicle as a minibus and said the strike had “no military rationale”. He said the incident was connected to Russia’s targeting of logistics and critical infrastructure, which has continued “unabated”.

Zelenskyy said a passenger train was also struck in the Mykolaiv region on Wednesday, damaging a railway station and a diesel locomotive. Nearly 170 passengers on board the train were evacuated before the strike. An electric locomotive in the northwestern city of Kovel was also struck, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine requests locomotives from partners

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s rail network have resulted in more than 500 locomotives being damaged or completely destroyed since the beginning of the war in February 2022, with more than half of those strikes occurring this year, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X on Tuesday.

Sybiha described such attacks as “systematic” and aimed at disrupting logistics across Ukraine. He said Ukraine urgently needs replacements for damaged locomotives and called on the country’s partners to assist in finding locomotives compatible with its 1,520-millimetre rail gauge and in financing them.

In another post on X on Wednesday, Sybiha said Russian forces were striking passenger trains, locomotives, stations and railway routes “knowing exactly how essential they are for civilians, evacuations, and Ukraine’s economy”.

“This is not collateral damage. It is a systematic hunt for people and an attempt to paralyse civilian life,” he wrote.

Zelenskyy says there is no truce on halting energy strikes

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Zelenskyy pushed back against an earlier claim by US President Donald Trump that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to mutually cease attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to enter such an agreement if Russia stops striking Ukrainian energy facilities.

Trump said in a social media post on Monday that such a truce had been reached but did not offer details on the purported agreement. Previous efforts to broker even a partial ceasefire have repeatedly fallen apart within hours, with both sides accusing the other of violations.

In the CBS interview, Zelenskyy said the possibility of an energy truce was discussed during a recent meeting in Kyiv with Trump’s representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, but that he had told them: “If the Russians are ready for an energy truce, that means there will be no attacks on energy facilities at all.”

Meanwhile, 17 other sites were damaged in Ukraine’s Kyiv region between Tuesday and Wednesday morning, according to the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Tymur Tkachenko. Among the sites damaged were eight private homes, five vehicles, a municipal building, a hangar and a production facility, Tkachenko said on Telegram.

Zelenskyy said on X that the Kherson, Donetsk and Poltava regions had also come under attack.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences downed 71 Ukrainian drones overnight. In the Belgorod region, one person was killed and four others were injured by Ukrainian strikes over the last 24 hours, according to acting governor Alexander Shuvayev.