Eight killed after drone hits bus in Russia-controlled part of Ukraine

Eight people have been killed and 10 others injured after a drone hit a passenger bus travelling through a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, Russia has said.

Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, said the bus was struck in the early hours of Wednesday as it was travelling between a city near Moscow and Simferopol, in Russian-annexed Crimea.

In a Ukraine-held part of the Donetsk region, three people were killed and one injured in Russian shelling of the city of Kramatorsk, local official Vadym Filashkin said.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, black smoke could be seen rising over Russia's second largest city of St Petersburg, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky confirming an oil terminal had been hit there.

The attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown thousands of kilometres from Ukraine's border comes as St Petersburg hosts the annual International Economic Forum, an event designed to showcase Russia to the world. Putin is due to speak there on Friday.

The strikes come a day after a massive Russian assault on cities across Ukraine killed at least 22 people, including several women and children.

In Donetsk, Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal case into what they described as a "terrorist attack" on civilians.

Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee, said authorities were working to establish the identities of those responsible for the strike.

Fifty-three people had been registered to travel on the bus, Russia's state-run media report, however, none of the victims' identities have been released yet.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian government's centre for combating disinformation, has talked about a "parallel reality" created by Russian state propaganda, while not explicitly denying claims that the strike took place.

"Russia attacks civilians with drones all the time... of course, when everyone is talking about this, when there is evidence of such actions by the Russians, they use their main propaganda tool: creating a parallel reality," he told the BBC.

"Against this background of attacks on our civilians, they come up with stories in which Ukraine acts just like Russia. This is done to justify their own terror as a response to our actions."

Drones were downed over Belgorod, Kursk and other western regions, as well as near Moscow and over the Sea of Azov, Russian officials added.

In total, Russia says it shot down 350 Ukrainian drones overnight.

At least 50 of those were downed over the Leningrad region north-west of Moscow, accordi