On Jan. 13, a crowded intercity minibus was leisurely winding its usual route from the village of Zlatoustivka to Donetsk when it stopped for passport checks at a Ukrainian checkpoint. The vehicle never moved again.
At around 2:30 P.M. dozens of rockets fired from a Grad multiple launcher rained down on the area, spewing deadly shrapnel. One of them landed just meters from the bus and riddled the vehicle and its passengers with metal shards. Ten were killed on the spot, including a 14-year-old girl.
“There was a huge explosion. Our bus was deformed, the doors blocked, the windows blown out,” one of the survivors, 64-year-old Valery Zubko, said.
“I was hit in the head, my bones were fractured and my flesh ripped through,” he added.
Zubko, who was returning to Donetsk after visiting relatives in Kharkiv Oblast, said he had to escape the bus through the window with the help of National Guardsmen, who gave him first aid.
Medical volunteer Galyna Odnoroh was horrified when she arrived on the scene 30 minutes after the tragedy:
“There were bloodstains on both sides of the bus, and the bus was soaked with blood inside,” she told the Kyiv Post.
By the time she arrived the wounded had already been taken to the hospital of the nearest town, Volnovakha, but the bodies of the girl, five women and four men were still in the bus, she added.
Hospital workers were unable to save one 24-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man who died from their injuries. Another woman was rushed to Mariupol regional center for surgery to repair her face, Oleksandr Bezuhly, chief physician of Volnovakha hospital, told the Kyiv Post. On Jan. 15 there were still 12 wounded in his hospital, 10 of whom were battling serious injuries, he added.
A border guard officer and a volunteer of the Kyiv 2 battalion were also injured by the rocket.
The head of Donetsk’s regional police force, Vyacheslav Abroskin, said that Russian–backed separatists had fired the rockets from the town of Dokuchayevsk at the Ukrainian forces checkpoint outside Volnovakha.
Separatists tried to point the finger back at Ukrainian forces, claiming the bus hit a checkpoint landmine, but a dashboard cam video obtained exclusively by the Kyiv Post shows a series of rockets landing the area and exploding next to the parked bus.
Observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe confirmed in a Jan.14 report that the damage to the bus was consistent with a Grad rocket attack. The OSCE will oversee a joint investigation by Ukrainian, Russian and separatist authorities from the Donetsk People’s Republic to investigate the tragedy.
Military blogger and lawmaker Dmytro Tymchuk said the group of separatists operating out of Dokuchayevsk, had already become notorious for their “non-systematic artillery strikes.”
The casualty list indicates that most of the people travelling on bus were residents of Donetsk and Makeyevka, the largest cities under the control of Russian-backed separatists.
Many of them were pensioners who were probably travelling to the government-controlled territory to receive their monthly payment.
“Now is the time of the month to get pensions, so people travel from Donetsk to Ukraine-controlled territory,” said Olena Malyutina, a spokesperson for Donetsk Oblast Administration. After Ukraine’s government ceased all payments to areas controlled by separatists from November, some residents managed to register in Ukrainian territory to receive their pensions and return home.
The tragedy provoked outrage across Ukraine and the slogan “Je suis Volnovakha,” went viral, equating the Ukrainian tragedy to the terrorist attack in Paris on Jan 7.
“The mass shooting of people in Paris and Volnovakha are similar events. The civilized world must unite in the fight against terrorism,” President Petro Poroshenko said in his address to the nation and ordered to make Jan. 15 a day of mourning in Ukraine.”
A two-year-old girl was killed and one woman wounded in a separate incident on Jan. 13 after insurgents shelled the Ukrainian-held village of Granitne, some 60 kilometers from Mariupol, according to local authorities.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
