Brussels public transport company STIB is donating 36 buses to Ukraine as it renews and electrifies its fleet, CEO Brieuc de Meeûs announced at a press conference on Monday.

The diesel buses, which entered service in 2010 and 2011, have each logged around 700,000 km. From September, they will be deployed in communities in the northern oblasts of Chernihiv and Sumy.

“These buses will mean that life, normal life, continues,” the ambassador of Ukraine to Belgium Yaroslav Melnyk said on Monday, at the Tram Museum in the Belgian capital.

“People will have a possibility to get to their jobs, children to go to their schools, medical staff to their hospitals, elderly people to get necessary services, and so on.”

While a significant gesture of solidarity, STIB’s donation is dwarfed by the scale of destruction wrought by the Kremlin since Russia’s president Putin ordered a full-scale invasion over four years ago.

“Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion we have lost more than 14,000 of buses, trams, and trolley buses since the beginning of the full-scale invasion by Russia,” Melnyk noted.

The ongoing electrification of Brussels’ bus fleet could mean further donations to Ukraine. “We have until 2035 to replace our fleet of 800 buses, 150 of which are already electric,” de Meeûs said. “Another 500 or 600 may still be disposed of or sold.”

European solidarity

Similar initiatives have sprung up across Europe since February 2022. Last, November 2025, the Île-de-France region around Paris announced it would donate 400 diesel buses to Ukraine as part of the process of electrifying its fleet, again to Chernihiv, and also the Kyiv.

Over the past few years, EU countries have delivered 370 school buses to Ukrainian communities. Cities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia sent 216 buses, Germany, Italy (for example, Milan and Abruzzo), Estonia, and Latvia have also sent buses to the war-torn country.

The Brussels buses will be driven to Ukraine in convoy after the summer.

“We’re not going to deploy all 36 buses at once, but in batches of 8–10,” Meeûs said. “It’s a major logistical operation, because we have to transport them to the Polish border and find places to refuel, bearing in mind that we stop every 300 km.”

Once within Ukraine, certainly, increased Russian attacks on civilian refuelling stations could complicate the journey across already dangerous terrain.

Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region, Boris Dilliès welcomed the “practical assistance provided by Brussels, which demonstrates European solidarity with Ukraine”.

It was “important for everyone to make an effort to help in their own way”, Dilliès said.

(rh)