As the prosecutor's office of Donetsk region announced on Telegram on 11 October 2026, the “occupation troops” attacked Sloviansk, according to its information, at 9.45 a.m. with three glide bombs of the FAB-250 type with UMPK modules; according to the authority, the impacts were in a densely built-up residential area. The news agency Ukrinform reports, citing the prosecutor's office, that seven people were injured in Sloviansk: five women aged 28, 52, 53, 72 and 76, as well as two men aged 25 and 80. According to the report, closed craniocerebral traumas, concussions, cut wounds and contusions were diagnosed.
According to the regional prosecutor’s office, nine multi-family buildings were partially destroyed or damaged in the centres of the impacts, as well as one shop. The final consequences of the attack were still being determined, it said. The settlement of Yasnohirka in Kramatorsk municipality was also hit, according to Ukrinform; there, a 55-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man were injured. According to the prosecutor’s office, they suffered a mine-explosion injury as well as shrapnel wounds. Under the procedural supervision of the district prosecutor’s offices of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, according to this information, preliminary investigations were opened for war crimes, under Article 438, paragraph 1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.
A front section that has been under pressure for months
The attacks fall in a phase in which the situation around the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk conurbation has recently developed contradictorily. In July 2026, the taz described how both cities increasingly became targets of Russian air strikes: along the main streets, concrete wedges, so-called dragon’s teeth, were set up and barbed wire was strung, with nets for drone defence above the streets. According to a 37-year-old Ukrainian soldier, Vitalii Ovcharenko, the front line was then only eight to 15 kilometres away. The head of the military city administration of Sloviansk, Vadym Liakh, told the taz at the time that 39,000 people were still living in the city, that municipal services, the hospital and the banking system continued to function, and that the maternity ward was in operation.
The taz also reported that around 3,000 children were still staying in Sloviansk municipality, and almost 4,000 in Kramatorsk municipality, and that the numbers were decreasing daily. Even then, an evacuation of children was mandatory only for certain areas of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk; Ukrinform now reported that the zone of mandatory evacuation of children in Donetsk region had been extended to further parts of Kramatorsk.
Ukrainian counterattacks east of the cities
Militarily, according to the assessment of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the situation has recently become more complicated for Russia. On 9 October, the Berliner Zeitung reported, citing the ISW situation analysis of 8 October, that Russian military bloggers had acknowledged new Ukrainian territorial gains east of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. According to this, Ukrainian troops are said to have recaptured the village of Ozerne and driven Russian units out of Pyskunivka south-east of Lyman; further advances were reported east of Pyskunivka in the direction of Kryva Luka. Ukrainian successes were also reported near Mykolaivka immediately east of Sloviansk as well as in the Kramatorsk area – there the recapture of Malynivka and advances between Fedorivka Druha and Holubivka – according to the Berliner Zeitung. The newspaper stressed that all these details could not be fully independently confirmed.
According to the Berliner Zeitung, the ISW referred to geolocated footage from the surroundings of Tykhonivka east of Kramatorsk, which showed a Ukrainian attack on a Russian position. Several Russian military bloggers also reported that Ukrainian units had crossed the Siverskyi Donets river and pushed Russian troops back from both banks. According to a Ukrainian military representative on 7 October, the Russian military leadership is transferring units from less heavily contested front sections in the direction of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, including special forces and members of the unmanned systems forces; according to the Berliner Zeitung, there was no independent confirmation of the scale and timing of these troop movements.
On 15 September, the BBC reported that Russian troops were continuing their attack on the conurbation, whose capture many analysts regarded as a priority goal of the Russian campaign in the coming months. Successful Ukrainian counterattacks near Lyman had made Russian plans for a northern encirclement of Sloviansk more difficult, but the situation on the entire key section remained difficult for the Ukrainian armed forces. According to the BBC, the Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets wrote that the Russian troops had been able to organise their attacks on the conurbation “frontally”, while the Ukrainian leadership struggled around the flanks. The Ukrainian expert Oleksandr Kovalenko told the BBC that if the Russian tempo did not slow, the first Russian intruders could appear in Sloviansk or Kramatorsk by the end of December 2026. In its situation assessment of 13 September, the ISW gave a more favourable forecast for Ukraine: because of the loss of the bridgehead near Lyman, the number of Russian attacks per day in September had fallen to four, after an average of 14 in August.
Editor’s note: The military situation descriptions are based on information from the ISW, Russian military bloggers and Ukrainian military personnel, which cannot be fully independently verified. The casualty figures from Sunday’s attack come from the prosecutor’s office of Donetsk region; according to its own information, the final consequences are still being determined.
