Lead
Russian authorities report that Ukrainian forces have carried out more than 70 attacks on buses in Russia since the beginning of the year, killing 24 civilians and injuring 204 others, including 14 children. The figures, based on regional and local authority data reviewed by the Russian state news agency TASS, were published on July 28. A senior Russian diplomat has separately accused Ukrainian military drone operators of deliberately targeting civilian buses, calling it a 'bus terror' tactic.
Coverage Comparison
Two reports from Russia's TASS news agency provide the basis for this story. The first, published on July 28, presents casualty and damage statistics from regional authorities. The second, published on August 4, quotes a Russian Foreign Ministry official describing a deliberate Ukrainian strategy against civilian transport. While both reports focus on Ukrainian attacks, they differ in emphasis: the first is statistical, detailing numbers of incidents and casualties; the second is more accusatory, describing the attacks as intentional and part of a broader strategy.
Key Claims
According to TASS, Ukrainian forces have carried out over 70 attacks on buses in Russia since the start of the year. The attacks have resulted in 24 deaths and 204 injuries, including 14 children. Most attacks occurred in the Donbass and Novorossiya regions, where Ukrainian forces hit passenger buses and bus depots 41 times. In the Central Federal District, 112 buses were destroyed, with 14 people killed and 125 injured across 31 attacks. The Belgorod Region accounted for the majority of casualties there, with 11 killed and 102 wounded.
TASS also reported a June 6 incident in the Southern Federal District, where a passenger bus in Sochi's Khostinsky City District was destroyed by falling UAV debris. The regional emergency operations center said 15 people were on board and nobody was injured. On July 22, a Ukrainian drone attack damaged a school bus depot near a Wildberries logistics center in Krasnodar, according to Mayor Yevgeny Naumov. The regional authorities subsequently supplied 20 school buses to the city to organize children's transportation.
The second TASS report quotes Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik, who claimed that Ukrainian drones had attacked 34 civilian buses over the past two months. He described this as a 'massively adopted' criminal tactic and part of a 'deliberate strategy to destroy civilian logistics.' He provided examples: on July 28, Ukrainian strikes on civilian transport in the Belgorod Region and the Donetsk People's Republic injured 26 civilians — 21 in Shebekino and five in Gorlovka. At the end of the same week, a service bus in the Zaporozhye Region was attacked, killing one employee and injuring 12.