Church in Kramatorsk Destroyed as Russia Continues Strikes across Ukraine

Despite claims and beliefs to the contrary, Russia is continuing its murderous and destructive path across Ukraine.

On the evening of September 22, 2026, Russian forces launched a series of heavy airstrikes on residential areas in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, utilizing multiple guided aerial bombs (including FAB-250/KAB-250 and KAB-500 bombs fitted with UMPK modules). The town is located in eastern Ukraine, some 336 miles east of Kyiv.

The local 25-year-old Church of St. John the Baptist of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, located in the older part of the city, suffered heavy direct destruction.

According to reports from the UOC Information and Education Department and local volunteers, the blast wave and impact severely compromised the structure. The walls, roof, and dome sustained critical structural failures, the internal metal frame was heavily twisted and deformed, and the surrounding grounds were left buried under deep layers of debris.

The wider barrage across Kramatorsk hit residential zones heavily, damaging around 10 multi-story apartment buildings, dozens of private homes, a bank, a shop, and civilian vehicles. Across the city and the broader Donetsk region, the attacks resulted in multiple civilian casualties, leaving at least one person dead and several others wounded in Kramatorsk alone, alongside extensive regional infrastructure damage.

Photos and video documentation showing heavy structural blow to the church’s dome and framework, as well as the wreckage across the surrounding neighborhood, have circulated widely via the National Police of Ukraine, local media, and regional emergency service updates.

Documentation from Ukrainian authorities, international human rights monitors, and organizations like the Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF) shows that Russian demonic cutthroats have damaged or destroyed more than 700 religious sites across Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Between 700 and 740 churches, prayer houses, mosques, synagogues, and other sacred buildings have sustained varying degrees of damage. Of that total, approximately 200 structures have been leveled or burned down entirely beyond repair.

The heaviest concentrations of targeted or collateral destruction are in the front-line and heavily contested eastern and southern regions—particularly Donetsk (where Kramatorsk is located), Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Kyiv oblasts.

While the majority of the impacted buildings belong to various Orthodox communities (including both the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and communities formerly or currently tied to the Moscow Patriarchate), the destruction has heavily hit Protestant and evangelical prayer houses (Baptists, Pentecostals, and Adventists), as well as Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Halls, Catholic churches, mosques, and synagogues.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on September 22 that Russia is preparing to launch a new large-scale strike against Ukraine. In the past, Zelenskyy’s observations have proved to be painfully accurate.

Zelenskyy’s comments followed a meeting about security and air defense support with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

“We currently have intelligence information indicating that Russia is preparing a new mass attack against Ukraine,” he said on social media after the meeting.

Zelenskyy did not provide additional details on the expected Russian attack or the contents of the intelligence reports. His warning comes after he told the press Ukraine was ready to agree to a total halt on energy attacks as part of a US-brokered ceasefire with Russia — if Russia agrees to the same terms.

In other war news, At least 10 civilians were killed and 53 others injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day as a diesel locomotive was hit in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border, local authorities said on September 22-23.

Overall, over the past day, Russian forces launched 161 Shahed-type attack drones, including jet-powered versions, as well as Gebera, Parodiya decoy drones and Banderol drones, the Air Force said on September 23. Ukrainian air defenses shot down or suppressed 119 drones, while strikes were recorded at 18 locations. Debris from downed drones fell at eight locations, the Air Force said.

In Kyiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day damaged 18 facilities, injuring three people, including a 76-year-old man, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration, said.

In Kyiv, Russian drones killed one person and injured at least seven more, damaging warehouses and gas stations in the early hours of Sept. 23, local authorities reported.

In southeastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast, two people were injured in a Russian attack on a shopping mall in Zaporizhzhia, and another person was killed as a Russian attack damaged his house in the rural settlement of Kushuhum, local authorities said.

Russian attacks on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast injured seven people over the past day, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha reported, according to the reports published on September 22-23.

PS – When President Zelenskyy referred to Vladimir Putin as “patient zero” during his address to the UN General Assembly, he used a medical epidemiological metaphor to describe the Russian dictator as the original source and spreader of a destructive global contagion—the disease of Russia’s latest war against Ukraine.