A serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine stands near a Ukrainian armoured vehicle fitted with an anti-FPV drone metal cage destroyed by a Russian FPV drone on the streets of Druzhkivka, the Donetsk region in Druzhkivka, Ukraine.

• Seven people were killed in a drone strike on a bus in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine.
• The bus was hit in the Donetsk region as it travelled from Moscow to Simferopol in Crimea.
• Russia and Ukraine have traded regular aerial assaults since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.

A drone strike killed seven people and wounded 11 as it hit a bus in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine, Moscow-installed authorities in the Donetsk region said on Wednesday.

The incident comes a day after a massive drone and missile barrage by Russia on Ukraine killed at least 23 people.

The bus was hit in the Donetsk region as it travelled from Moscow to Simferopol in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

“In Yenakiyevo, a UAV attacked a Moscow-Simferopol coach; according to preliminary reports, seven civilians were killed,” Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said on Telegram.

“A further 11 people sustained injuries of varying severity, and all are receiving the necessary medical care,” he added.

READ | 9 dead as Russia hits Ukraine with ‘massive new strike’

Russia and Ukraine have traded regular aerial assaults since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, deploying waves of missiles and drones in tit-for-tat strikes.

Authorities in the Ukrainian capital had warned that Russia was preparing the latest in a string of massive deadly strikes that have escalated the four-year-old war and dimmed slim hopes for peace.

AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens wail before a series of loud explosions that lasted through the night into early Tuesday sent residents with bags and blankets rushing to shelter in crowded metro stations.

“It was a brutal strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a late Tuesday address, warning that Russia may follow up that same night with another assault from the skies.

“Unfortunately, the current level of supplies for our air defence does not allow us to shoot down a significant share of the missiles,” he said, giving a toll of 130 wounded overall in Tuesday’s blitz.

“We are preparing additional measures for our counteraction,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader used the attack to make a new appeal for military support from the US and from Europe.

“All partners together, everyone in Europe, must continue working so that there are (we obtain) missiles for our air defence,” he said.

The French foreign ministry denounced Moscow’s “utter contempt” for peace efforts while the United Nations said Moscow’s “inflammatory rhetoric and escalation of attacks should stop”.

Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia had fired 73 missiles and 656 drones in one of the largest attacks of the war, overwhelming parts of its air defence and damaging cities including Kyiv and Dnipro.

Overnight into Wednesday, Russia said its air defences intercepted 354 Ukrainian drones across multiple regions, including areas bordering Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

The Russian defence ministry said the drones were downed over Belgorod, Kursk and other western regions, as well as near Moscow and over the Sea of Azov.