A bus full of young footballers from Gomel was bound for the Russian Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik when, according to Russian officials, a drone struck it in Bryansk Oblast on June 17. A woman travelling with the team died. Kyiv says it had nothing to do with it.
Yegor Kovalchuk, the acting governor of Bryansk, was the first to speak. He said the woman had been accompanying the children, posted pictures of the scene, and promised that every passenger would be sent home to Belarus. The bus held 44 people, 28 of them children. Kovalchuk said medical and psychological help had been provided and that medics from Moscow were on their way.
The injury count shifted through the day. Kovalchuk first spoke of six wounded, four of them children. Belarusian Health Minister Alexander Khodzhaev later put the figure at eight, including six children, two in serious condition. Neither the Kyiv Independent nor RFE/RL could independently confirm that a drone hit the bus or who launched it.
Kyiv’s answer
Ukraine’s General Staff rejected the claim in a statement on Telegram. Its forces, it said, “did not employ unmanned aerial vehicles against targets in Bryansk” during the period Russian officials named. It called the report “yet another information provocation orchestrated by the Kremlin,” and added that Ukraine’s forces “engage exclusively lawful military targets and do not conduct combat operations against the civilian population.”
A day later the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, went further. It said it had obtained an internal Russian document from Bryansk’s “Safe Region” monitoring center, which recorded no Ukrainian drones in the area at the time. The SBU said the paper cited a regional operations center, a radar unit in the settlement of Suponyevo and Russia’s 32nd Division, and that none of them logged drone activity. In the SBU’s view, that gives grounds to treat the incident as a Russian special services operation. The claim comes from the SBU alone.
Who the victims were
The Belarusian independent outlet Nasha Niva named the dead woman as Victoriya Hrytsenka, 44. She was the wife of Alyaksei Garoshka, a coach at Children’s and Youth Sports School No. 2 in Rechytsa, in the Gomel region. Nasha Niva reported that Garoshka was most likely injured and in serious condition. Russia’s Investigative Committee published video of the damaged bus.
Minsk reacts
Belarus’ Foreign Ministry condemned the attack as “yet another act of terrorism against the civilian population” and demanded explanations from Kyiv. Spokesperson Ruslan Varankov urged Belarusians to avoid travel to conflict zones and adjacent regions, particularly with children.
Alexander Lukashenko said on June 18 that the drone was Ukrainian, Belta reported. He added that he was waiting for “a real, fair, and honest response” from Ukraine. “If someone is provoking us and trying to drag us into the war,” he said, “I think it will backfire on whoever is trying to do that.”
Exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya sent condolences and asked for “full clarity” from an investigation. Writing on X, she said: “Russia is not safe, especially for Belarusians. This criminal Russian war must end.”
The episode lands after a tense stretch between Minsk and Kyiv. Days earlier, according to the Kyiv Post, Lukashenko ruled out Belarus joining Russia’s war, citing roots “somewhere between Chernihiv and Kyiv,” and apologized to Volodymyr Zelensky for harsh past remarks. Bryansk, on Ukraine’s northern border, is hit regularly by Ukrainian drones. On May 25, the General Staff said, Ukrainian forces damaged the Belets oil depot there.
Sources
- Ukraine Denies Russian Claims Of Strike On Bus Carrying Belarusian Children
- Ukraine Denies Russian Claim of Drone Strike on Bus Carrying Belarusian Children
- Ukraine denies Russian claim that Ukrainian drone struck bus carrying Belarusian children's football team
