The corpses of children, their families, and the elderly were found strewn Friday morning following a Russian attack on a crowded train station in eastern Ukraine.
At least 50 people were killed, and nearly 100 others were wounded in one of the most brazen and brutal attacks against civilians since the start of the conflict seven weeks ago.
“Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station,” Ukrainian Railways said in a statement. “According to operational data, more than 30 people were killed, and more than 100 were wounded in the rocket attack on Kramatorsk railway station.”
The number of dead increased to 50, including 12 who had died in the hospital, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donestsk Military Administration, said. Sixteen children were wounded.
About 4,000 people had gathered at the Kramatorsk railway station, waiting to be evacuated, when two rockets hit.
Officials had warned earlier this week that the window was closing for civilians to get out as word spread that Russian forces had been withdrawing from the north to refocus their efforts in the east and south.
“The inhuman Russians are not changing their methods,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop.”
In a video shared by the Ukrainian government, the inscription “for the children” could be seen scrawled in white lettering on the side of the missile.
Another angle of the Tochka-U missile used in today railway station attack, with the words “For the (our) Children” written on the side. These are guided missiles, it’s hard to see that this wasn’t a deliberate attack on a known evacuation site. pic.twitter.com/K22FO0BGu8
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) April 8, 2022
Kyrylenko, shared a photo online that showed bloodied people lying on the pavement surrounded by luggage and debris. In another, the exterior of the Kramatorsk station was visible, with smoke rising from it.
Railways have been the main mode of transportation out of eastern Ukraine, and photos taken over the past few days have shown crowded platforms with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder trying to escape.
“Russians knew that the train station in Kramatorsk was full of civilians waiting to be evacuated,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. “Yet they stroke it with a ballistic missile, killing at least 30 and injuring at least a hundred people. This was a deliberate slaughter. We will bring each war criminal to justice.”
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Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament, said the Kramatorsk attack “goes down as yet another tragedy.”
“Russia specifically targeted a place with a crowd of civilians: mothers, children, old people,” she said. “The barbarities just shifted to a new location.”
The strike at the train station appeared to be following the Russian strategy of targeting civilians and infrastructure. It’s a move that has devastated places such as the besieged port city of Mariupol and Kharkiv and is intended to spread fear and demoralize people.
The United Nations’s refugee agency said that more than 4.3 million, half of them children, have left Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24 and sparked Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The International Organization for Migration estimated more than 12 million people are stranded in areas of Ukraine under attack.
The U.N.’s humanitarian chief said he was “not optimistic” about securing a ceasefire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and Moscow this week, given the lack of trust between the sides, the Associated Press reported. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on the proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine’s military status.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, which has denied ever killing unarmed civilians, called reports that Moscow was responsible a “provocation.” The ministry said the type of missile used in the strike, the Tochka-U, was only used by Ukraine’s armed forces and that Russia had not made any strikes against Kramatorsk on Friday.
Russian officials have also claimed they have never attacked civilians, a claim that has been rebutted by a mountain of growing evidence.
The president of the European Council, reacting to the images of mangled bodies at the train station, said the European Union should adopt more sanctions against Russia.
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“Horrifying to see Russia strike one of the main stations used by civilians evacuating the region where Russia is stepping up its attack,” Charles Michel tweeted. “Action is needed: more sanctions on Russia and more weapons to Ukraine are underway from the EU.”
