A Russian campaign to make Ukraine’s towns and cities unlivable is exacting an enormous toll on Ukrainian civilians.
At least 30 people were killed on Thursday when a Russian guided bomb struck a commuter bus in eastern Ukraine, officials said. That attack, in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, came a day after a Russian cruise missile slammed into a five-story apartment building in Pryluky, a small city about 200 miles from any active combat zone. At least 22 people, including five children, died in that strike, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
The pace of Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities has intensified as the Kremlin expands its arsenal of newly developed jet-powered drones and increases the range of powerful guided bombs dropped from warplanes. Russia is also employing new communication tools that allow pilots to remotely guide munitions for precision strikes from hundreds of miles away.
Russia launched about 3,500 jet-powered drones against targets across Ukraine in September, compared with 350 in June, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukraine is working furiously to develop interceptors that work against the jet-powered drones, which travel at hundreds of miles per hour.
On Thursday morning, one of those jet drones smashed into a store in downtown Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, killing three people and injuring 14 others, city officials said.
The store was hit a day after a large-scale bombardment on Wednesday killed at least 30 people across the country, including six in the capital.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine noted that the bombardment, which included the cruise missile strike on the apartment complex in Pryluky, was on President Vladimir V. Putin’s 74th birthday.
“This is the kind of ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday. “The killing of children, the killing of people.”
While drones and missiles pose the biggest threat across Ukraine, frontline cities like Kramatorsk, where the bus was struck, are being slowly destroyed by artillery and guided bombs that can carry hundreds of pounds of explosives.
In August, Russia dropped a record 8,700 guided bombs on military and civilian targets, according to the Ukrainian military.
The epicenter of the fighting remains the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine still controls around 20 percent of the territory, including Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and other cities that make up a belt of heavily fortified land.
Around 93,000 civilians remain in areas under Ukrainian control in Donetsk, including more than 4,200 children, according to local officials.
“The Russians are deliberately targeting civilians,” Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said in a statement after the attack on the bus. “For them, a bus carrying passengers is an attractive target precisely because a single strike can kill as many people as possible.”
Nataliia Novosolova and Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting.
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