The fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine is now dangling by a thread. Sources on the ground report that a drone strike hit a civilian bus just outside Donetsk, a city under Russian occupation. Eight people are dead. A dozen more are wounded. The bus was ferrying workers from a local factory. It was not a military target. This is a massacre.
Who fired the drone? That is the question that will savage the peace talks in Minsk. Kyiv denies everything. They point the finger at Russian-backed separatists, calling it a false flag operation. The Kremlin says it was a Ukrainian provocation, a deliberate attempt to scupper the ceasefire. No independent verification is possible. The fog of war is thick. But the political fallout is already clear.
Inside the Ministry of Defence, sources tell me there is panic. The UK had been cautiously optimistic about the truce. No longer. One senior MoD official I spoke to described the strike as "a game changer." The language is stark. They are dusting off contingency plans for a full-scale escalation.
On the ground, the OSCE monitors are scrambling. Their patrols have been obstructed before. This time they are being blocked from the crash site. That has enraged the Foreign Office. Whitehall sources say the Russians are running a deliberate cover-up.
Downing Street is taking this seriously. The PM cut short a regional visit to chair a COBRA meeting. The tone from Number 10 is grim. A readout of the call described "the utmost concern." No one is talking about retaliation yet. But the mood is shifting.
The real fear here is a breakdown of communication. The hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin has been quiet for hours. There are whispers in the circuit that the Russian military is on high alert. That is dangerous. One miscalculation and this becomes a wider war.
Labour is already sharpening its knives. The shadow foreign secretary is calling for an emergency UN Security Council session. The government is resisting that for now. They want to see the evidence first. But the pressure is mounting.
The ceasefire was always a fiction, a polite fiction. We all knew it. The violence never really stopped. But this changes the optics. Eight civilians dead in a single attack is a threshold. It forces a response.
In the lobbies, the talk is of consequences. Sanctions. A fresh round of them. The EU is already drafting a statement. But words are cheap. What matters is action. And that is what no one is willing to offer yet.
I have been covering this conflict for years. It is a series of broken promises and dead bodies. This strike feels different. It feels like the end of the pretence. The ceasefire is not just in doubt. It is dead. The only question is who digs the grave first.
Watch this space. The story is breaking fast. And I am told there is more to come. A second incident is rumoured. I cannot confirm it. Not yet. But if it is true, we are looking at a full-scale collapse of the peace process.
For now, we count the dead. Eight souls. Victims of a war that refuses to end. North of Donetsk, the sirens are sounding again. The world should be listening.
