Kramatorsk. On October 8, 2026, the Russian army struck two buses in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. According to the National Police and the regional prosecutor's office, at least 30 people were killed and another 18 were injured. The death toll could rise, reports tagesschau, citing Ukrainian official sources.
Vadym Filashkin, head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, published a photo of a burned-out bus. "These are people killed by the Russian army. There is and can be no justification for this," he wrote on Telegram.
Public transport in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk is being halted
Citing a "sharp deterioration in the security situation," Filashkin ordered the city military administrations of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk to suspend public transport operations. He also once again urged residents still remaining in the Donetsk region to leave for safer regions of Ukraine. Despite calls for evacuation, many people still do not want to abandon their homes and property.
Kramatorsk, together with Sloviansk, is the last major city in the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control. Before the full-scale invasion, about 150,000 people lived here, and the city is of key importance for the logistics of Ukrainian forces at the front.
Power outages in Kyiv and front-line regions
After new shelling, emergency power outages had to be introduced in Kyiv and part of the region, Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov reported. Equipment was damaged, and voltage fluctuations are being observed in the grid. In some districts of the capital, water supply pumps also stopped as a result. According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, three people were killed as a result of the attacks.
Parts of Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions were also left without power. Energy workers are restoring the grids where the security situation allows.
Pryluky: death toll now 22
The day before, on Wednesday, Russia launched massive strikes. The death toll after a missile hit a building in Pryluky in the Chernihiv region has risen to 22, including five children. Another 54 people were injured, seven of them children. During a night attack on Kyiv on Wednesday, two more people were killed. According to Reuters, citing the Ukrainian side, 32 people were killed in Ukraine as a result of Russian strikes that day alone.
Retaliatory strikes: Yandex, Omsk, and Salavat
Ukraine, for its part, struck a data center of Russia's largest internet company, Yandex, in the Ryazan region. The company confirmed a fire and damage to part of its infrastructure; the facility's operations have been halted, and there were no casualties. Yandex develops, among other things, the YandexGPT language model — one of Russia's leading artificial intelligence systems.
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, oil facilities were also hit, including once again Russia's largest refinery in Omsk — roughly 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine — which supplies fuel to the Russian army. An oil refining complex in Salavat (Bashkortostan), about 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow, was also attacked.
New talks in the US
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a new meeting of the Ukrainian delegation with representatives of Donald Trump — Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The talks are to take place on Friday and Saturday in the US; a European team is also expected to join.
What this means for Ukrainians in Germany
For many Ukrainians in Germany whose relatives still live in the Donetsk region, this news is another signal: evacuation from front-line cities remains a matter of life. If your loved ones are in Kramatorsk or Sloviansk, it is worth following the regional administration's announcements regarding evacuation routes and agreeing on an exit plan in advance.
Based on materials from tagesschau.de (October 8, 2026).