The drivers risking death on Ukraine's most dangerous bus routes

The drivers risking death on Ukraine's most dangerous bus routesJust nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleVitaly ShevchenkoChief Analyst, BBC Monitoring, KyivBBCBus driver Maksym Dyak was hospitalised with a broken rib and shrapnel embedded in his chest after a drone attack but he says he owes it to his city to keep drivingWarning, some of the details of this story are disturbingAnatoly Dmytrov was driving his bus on Route 14 in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson earlier this month. The bus was full and people were standing in the aisle, when it reached an intersection and it was hit by a Russian drone."All the windows got smashed. I barely made it to the next stop, where there was a shelter. I looked in the mirror and saw blood. I thought - oh, I need to get to the shelter quickly because sometimes they send a second drone immediately," Anatoly said.He was in shock after the attack, and at least eight of his passengers were injured, he added."It's no fun working here," Anatoly said. "This happens almost every day, they've started hunting buses down. You go to work and you have no idea if you are going to come home."Kherson's municipal transport company, where Anatoly works, says the attacks started last year and are getting worse. Public transport has become a priority target for Russian drone operators, the company said in a statement shared with the BBC.This year alone, three of its workers have been killed, eight wounded, and 21 of its trolleybuses and eight buses damaged. Local authorities say six privately operated buses have been hit in 2026, too.Kherson local authorityTwenty-seven Kherson buses have been bombed so far this year, killing three transport workers About 65,000 people are still thought to be in Kherson, a city of some 300,000 residents before the war.The city is firmly under Ukrainian control and yet it is the administrative centre of one of the five Ukrainian regions which Russia claims as i...