The drivers risking death on Ukraine’s most dangerous bus routes
Warning, some details of this story are disturbing
Anatoly Dmytrov was driving his bus on Route 14 in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson earlier this month.
The bus was full and with people standing in the aisle, he reached an intersection and was hit by a Russian drone.
“All the windows were broken. I could barely reach the next stop, where there was a shelter. I looked in the mirror and saw blood. I thought, I need to get to the shelter as soon as possible, because sometimes they send a second drone immediately,” said Anatoly.
He added that he was in shock following the attack and that at least eight of his passengers were injured.
“It’s no fun working here,” Anatoly said. “This happens almost every day, they start hunting down buses. You go to work and you have no idea if you’re going to come home.”
Kherson’s municipal transport company, where Anatoly worked, says the attacks started last year and have gotten worse. In a statement shared with the BBC, the company said that public transportation has become a priority target for Russian drone operators.
This year alone, three of its workers were killed, eight were injured, and 21 trolleybuses and eight buses were damaged. Local authorities say six privately owned buses were also hit in 2026.
So far this year, 27 Kherson buses have been bombed, killing three transport workers [Kherson local authority]
It is thought that around 65,000 people still live in Kherson, which had around 300,000 people before the war.
Although the city is firmly under Ukrainian control, it is the administrative center of one of five Ukrainian regions that Russia claims as its own.
Occupied by the Russians in the first few days of the full-scale invasion in 2022, it was then retaken by the Ukrainians in the autumn of the same year and has since been subjected to relentless attacks by Russian forces from across the Dnipro river.
Rita Dobrinova, director of the Kherson municipal transport company, believes that the threat from Russian drones has become worse, especially since they started using jam-resistant fiber optic cables.
“Some of them just stand in the air, waiting. Others are reconnaissance drones. They look into the driver’s eyes through the windshield,” he said.
He recalls one deadly attack: “On April 11, there was a bus driver who literally had a bomb fall on his head. The bomb went through the roof of the cab and landed on his head.”
Authorities in Kherson have taken steps to protect bus drivers and passengers. Some of the busiest streets are lined with anti-drone netting that protects pedestrians and traffic below, and authorities say drivers are issued with helmets and bulletproof vests.
They were also given drone detectors. Chuykabut they have limited usage area.
They only detect approaching drones using known frequencies for navigation, but machines that rely on fiber optic cables or new frequencies are invisible to them.
Although Kherson itself is under Ukrainian control, the wider region on the other side of the Dnipro river is in Russian hands. [BBC]
The municipal transport company currently has about 30 buses. “I can’t say that every single one of them will encounter a drone every day,” Ms. Dobrinova said. “But the drone detector will beep every hour or hour and a half. All it tells you is that there is a drone around. It will show your distance to it in meters or kilometers.”
When Chuyka explodes, bus drivers have to stop, let their passengers out, and direct them to the nearest shelter.
Even going to work can be lethal. Another bus driver, Eduard Zadorozhny, was targeted by being put into a company minibus while he was on his way to work with his colleagues on May 3.
“They hit us, we went out and when the ambulance came to help us, they hit the ambulance.”
Deliberately targeting healthcare workers is a war crime under international law.
Recently, a Kherson bus driver was at work when a bomb fell directly on his head [Kherson local administration]
“What they do is hit you, then they hit you again. They’ve turned people’s lives into a horror show,” Eduard told the BBC.
Eduard suffered a concussion, but one of his colleagues, an engineer, was killed.
So why are bus drivers in Kherson returning to work despite serious danger?
“We need to get people to pharmacies and hospitals: the children and the elderly, everyone who stayed here, everyone who still lives here,” said municipal driver Maksym Dyak. “No one else will do this but us. We are aware that if we abandon these people, no one else will be able to drive them.”
Russia is accused of targeting civilians in Kherson, with some calling it a “human safari” [Getty Images]
Like his colleagues Anatoly and Eduard, Maksym became the target of Russian drones. He was hospitalized earlier this year with a broken rib and shrapnel lodged in his chest.
“We work like rats in a cage. We are attacked from all sides, but we keep going,” Maksym added.
Towards the end of our conversation with Maksym, I asked him if he was considering leaving Kherson.
“I never thought about leaving. This is where I was born, this is where I live, and this is where I will live to the fullest. I’m not going anywhere.”
