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New footage obtained from Ukrainian authorities and reviewed by CNN offers further details of a Russian strike on an underground shelter in southeastern Ukraine that killed more than 50 people.
The November 2 attack on Komyshuvakha was the deadliest Russian strike on Ukraine in 2026 and one of the deadliest of the war, CNN reported. People had gathered at the site to receive food and aid, and many had taken shelter there after an earlier strike.
CNN reviewed police bodycam recordings, weapon fragments, witness accounts and geolocated videos. The material indicates that the bombing involved a “double tap” — a second strike carried out shortly after an initial attack, after emergency workers had arrived.
The day before the attack, the Komyshuvakha village council announced on Telegram that residents could collect bread and hygiene kits at the school between 10 a.m. and noon on November 2. Less than 10 miles from the front line, the school had become an aid distribution point, a medical and social services hub and a place to sleep for the few hundred residents who remained.
Police footage captures second strike
Two bombs struck the school grounds between 9:45 and 9:50 a.m. local time, authorities told CNN. Preliminary reports said one woman was killed and another was trapped, injured but alive, beneath a concrete slab.
Ukraine’s interior ministry and national police gave CNN access to timestamped bodycam footage recorded by local officers Mykhailo Romanov and Dmytro Besedin. Besedin’s recording begins at 10:15 a.m., showing damaged buildings, rubble and rescuers trying to reach the trapped woman. A fire truck is still intact in the courtyard.
Fourteen minutes later, Romanov’s footage shows elderly residents outside, with a bicycle basket apparently containing collected aid. One man tells an officer he is ready to leave the village. At 10:32 a.m., a warning comes over the police radio that another airstrike is approaching.
Rescuers faced a choice between continuing to search for the woman and taking cover. A further warning told people to shelter. The officers and local residents went down three flights of stairs into the underground school and gathered in a room used by police.
At 10:35 a.m., both cameras record an explosion and an orange flash before the images go black. Ukrainian police said Romanov and Besedin, who had each served as community police officers for more than a decade, were killed along with two other officers. The recordings capture their final moments and the sounds of people groaning.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence service said the bunker collapsed and that six more airstrikes hit the site shortly afterward. CNN reviewed dozens of videos and independently corroborated accounts of multiple waves of strikes. Footage shows a yellow building that served as an entrance to the underground school apparently undamaged after the first strike, but heavily marked by the later attack. Weapons analyst Trevor Ball told CNN that damage to nearby buildings before the second strike could have been caused by smaller Russian bombs, such as the FAB-500.
Fragments point to FAB-3000 glide bomb
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence service identified the bomb that hit the bunker as a FAB-3000. The weapon weighs more than 6,000 pounds and carries more than 3,000 pounds of explosives. Russia has fitted such bombs with guidance kits, converting them into precision-guided glide bombs designed to attack fortified underground structures.
Videos show extensive destruction and a large crater between the bunker’s two entrances, as located by CNN. Smoke continued to rise from it hours later. Footage apparently showing the blast’s epicenter reveals a path through several layers of concrete into the bunker.
CNN obtained video and images from Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, showing a bomb-disposal team collecting fragments. The SBU said the crater measured about 30 meters by 20 meters (98 feet by 67 feet). CNN could not independently measure it because satellite imagery was unavailable. Two munitions experts who reviewed the footage said the crater and damage were consistent with a 6,000-pound bomb such as a FAB-3000.
Explosives expert Chris Cobb-Smith and Ball identified a fragment of a Russian UMPK glide-bomb guidance-kit wing in the SBU footage. They said it was consistent with kits attached to FAB-3000 bombs. CNN separately compared the fragment with online photographs of the kits and found them to match.
Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, condemned the attack and said the timing and location of the humanitarian distribution had been widely publicized. She said Russian forces either knew about the distribution or failed to take basic steps to find out what was happening in the village, adding that the attack appeared to violate fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky linked the strike to the U.S. midterm elections, saying Russia believed the United States would not notice its “signal” and that the “terror” must be noticed and stopped. Russia, which regularly denies targeting civilians, has not commented on the strike. In a statement to state media, the Russian Defence Ministry said it had attacked Ukrainian military units in the area that day.
Volunteer first responder Vladyslav Makhovsky arrived within hours and shared videos with CNN showing a destroyed fire truck and mangled bicycles among the rubble. The footage also shows a victim receiving CPR and people carrying away bodies. Makhovsky said Russian drones swarmed the area in the days after the strike, disrupting rescue and recovery efforts.
Makhovsky told CNN that everything was burned, including a rescue workers’ vehicle, and described people screaming and being pulled from the wreckage. He said one woman had lost an arm and was badly injured. Smoke was rising from the school entrance as rescuers tried to go inside wearing breathing apparatus. He said a large crater was directly over the underground school. On November 8, a drone again targeted people working at the site, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. No one was injured, but rescue equipment was damaged.
The underground school, built with EU funding to replace one destroyed in a Russian airstrike in July 2023, opened in October 2025. Videos showed colourful classrooms and a room with beds where young children could rest. It was intended to allow children to continue learning during the war, but shelling forced them to leave the village within months and the school closed. Local authorities then turned it into an administrative centre and humanitarian hub. Makhovsky said, to his knowledge, it had never served a military purpose.
CNN-reviewed footage from before and after the strikes showed no military infrastructure at the site. However, authorities said a military commander and a military paramedic were killed there. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command told CNN that Major Vitalii Bevz arrived at the aid distribution point after the first explosions and died in the repeat strikes. The brigade of Oleksandr Zalishchuk said the military paramedic was there by chance and began helping civilians.
The site had also been attacked in June, when local media reported that five Russian first-person-view drones targeted construction workers distributing building materials to residents whose homes had been damaged by shelling.
Komyshuvakha is one of many Ukrainian frontline villages heavily damaged by fighting. Most of its pre-war population of around 5,000 had left; about 200 residents, mostly elderly, remained and depended entirely on aid deliveries. Police officers and volunteers including Makhovsky carried rifles to shoot down FPV drones, which posed an almost constant threat. A farewell ceremony for officers killed in the attack was held on November 7, 2026.
In 2023, this section of the southern front was the focus of Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive, which aimed to cut Russia’s land bridge from Crimea to the Donbas. Russia made small advances in subsequent years but repeatedly failed to capture Orikhiv, a key stronghold less than 20 miles to the south.
On November 9, rescuers were still searching the rubble for about 19 people believed by authorities to be trapped. Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence service said DNA samples had been collected from relatives of the missing to help identify bodies recovered from the site.
