At least 50 people, including five children, have been killed and around 98 injured after a missile hit a train station packed with women, children and the elderly who were trying to flee the fighting. in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorskreports Reuters.
pictures show dead bodies lying on the platform, abandoned prams, suitcases and the remains of one of the two huge missiles that, according to the Ukrainian government, has been launched by the Russian side. Moscow denies it.
Volodymyr Zelenski assures that it is a deliberate attack against civilians. “Since they have neither the strength nor the courage to resist us on the battlefield, they are cynically attacking the civilian population,” the Ukrainian president said. “This is a demon that has no limits, and if no one stops him, he will not stop & rdquor ;.
Russia has said, through its defense ministry quoted by the public news agency RIA, that the missiles that have hit the station are used only by the Ukrainian Army and that its Armed Forces did not have any targets assigned today in Kramatorsk.
One of the bloodiest attacks
It is one of the bloodiest coups in the six weeks of war and comes at a time of international outrage at the atrocities that are beginning to be uncovered in Ukraine.
In front of the Kramatorsk station they saw several charred cars and the twisted remains of a missile on which you could read, in white letters and in Russian, the inscription “for our children,” reports AFP.
The place has been littered with abandoned suitcases, broken glass, rubble and desolation. The interior of the station, from which thousands of people have been evacuated for days, is covered in blood, often trampled and spread out into the street, due to the movement of bodies.
“I’m looking for my husband, he was here but I can’t find him,” said a woman without daring to approach the bodies of the victims, lined up outside the station.
Kramatorsk it is the capital of Donbas which is still under Ukrainian control. Hours before the attack, an AFP reporter visiting the station saw hundreds of people waiting in line to leave the region for safer parts of the country.
For days, Russian forces have been concentrating their operations in eastern and southern Ukraine, in a desire to create a corridor between Crimea, occupied and annexed in 2014 by Moscow, and the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the Ukrainian Donbas.
This forces thousands of civilians to flee to the west and north, although in many cases evacuations are disrupted by shelling.
The battle for Donbas
“It’s no secret, the battle for Donbas will be decisive. What we have already experienced, all this horror, can be multiplied,” Lugansk Governor Sergii Gaidai said.
For some analysts, the Russian president Vladimir Putin wants to take control of Donbas before the military parade on May 9, which commemorates the end of World War II, a very important and symbolic date in Russia.
In Donetsk, the regional military official Pavlo Kyrylenko has indicated that three trains had been temporarily blocked by a Russian air attack on a station.
“Every day is getting worse and worse. We are being rained on (bombs) from all sides. I can’t take it anymore,” said Denis, a pale-faced, gaunt man who looked much older than his 40s in Severodonetsk, another city in eastern Ukraine. “I want to escape this hell,” he added, as he waited his turn to flee by bus.
More horrible than Bucha
At the same time, new reports of atrocities emerge in areas hitherto occupied by the Russians near kyiv, days after the discovery of dozens of civilian bodies in the city of Bucha, at the gates of the capital, images that have generated worldwide revulsion .
“They have started searching the Borodianka ruins” northwest of kyiv, Zelensky said Thursday night. “It is much more horrible than in Bucha, there are even more victims of the Russian occupiers,” reported.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, indicated that so far 26 bodies had been discovered in the rubble of two buildings and warned that it is “the most destroyed city in the region.”
“Only the civilian population was targeted: there is no military base here,” Venediktova wrote on Facebook.
also emerged complaints from other areas, such as Obukhovychi, northwest of Kyiv, whose inhabitants have assured AFP that the Russians used them as human shields.
In the besieged Mariúpol (southeast), even the pro-Russian official proclaimed as the new “mayor” has recognized the death of 5,000 civilians in the port city.
Moscow has denied targeting civilians in areas under its control, but mounting evidence of its alleged atrocities has seen Russia suspended from the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.
More sanctions
They also caused the European Union (EU) to decide an embargo on imports of Russian coal and prohibit the entry of Russian ships to its ports. The bloc also backed Thursday a proposal to increase arms supplies to Ukraine by 500 million euros ($543 million).
In a show of support for that country, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, will meet with Zelensky on Friday in kyiv.
Before this appointment, Borrell has condemned “firmly” this Friday the attack on the Kramatorsk train station.
“This is a new attempt to close the evacuation routes for those fleeing this unjustified war and causing human suffering,” the official said on Twitter.
I strongly condemn this morning’s indiscriminate attack against a train station in #Kramatorsk by Russia, which killed dozens of people and left many more wounded. This is yet another attempt to close escape routes for those fleeing this unjustified war and cause human suffering
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) April 8, 2022
For its part, the G7, which brings together industrialized nations, also agreed to ban new investments in key sectors and restrictions on exports, in addition to the Russian coal veto.
And this Friday, the United Kingdom announced sanctions on the daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a desire to attack the “lavish lifestyle of the circle close to the Kremlin.”
The repercussions of the conflict are felt throughout the world. This Friday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced that world food prices reached “an unprecedented level” in March due to the war in Ukraine, which seriously affects trade in cereals and oils. vegetables.