The provisional toll of the attack on Kramatorsk station of at least 39 dead. The population had been invited to leave the area. The attack would signal the Russian change of strategy. Uncertainty about the type of missile used
One of the bloodiest attacks on the civilian population is expected to take place this morning in Kramatorsk, a city and railway hub in eastern Ukraine very close to the line of contact between the two warring armies. Here’s everything we know about what happened.
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• Shortly after 10 am, Italian time, some missiles landed on the station of Kramatorsk crowded with people who were leaving the area which had become too dangerous. According to the head of Ukrainian railways, quoted by the BBC, there were two missiles. The provisional balance made by the Ukrainian authorities of 39 dead and at least 100 injured.
• The governor of the region of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, according to international media reports, said that thousands of people (at least 4,000) were in the station at the time of the attack, in an attempt to leave the region. Kramatorsk was one of the stations in eastern Ukraine still operational.
• Kramatorsk is located in the region of Donbass, which became the main target of the Russian offensive; the city still under Ukrainian control. On Thursday a appeal by local authorities to the civilian population to leave the area: an attack by Russian forces was feared at any moment.
• Not yet clear what kind of bullets hit the station. It could be a Iskander missile, supplied to the Russians; or a Tochka-U which mainly supplied the Ukrainians. Moscow said it had attacked three stations in the Donbass with precision missiles. But after the emergence of the massacre, he denied authorship of the attack on Kramatorsk.
• According to multiple sources, on the side of the missile’s engine was written in Russian For Children; the grammatical formula used would not indicate an auspice (This missile to hit children) but a form of vindication (This missile a response to what you do to children).
• The Ukrainian authorities – but also Josep Borrell, head of European Union foreign policy – have attributed the paternity of the attack and the consequent massacre to the Russians. The authorities of the autonomous republic of Donbass deny having carried out the attack.
• For days, Moscow had announced that, after withdrawing from Kiev, it would concentrate its efforts on opposite fronts: the one from the south and the sea (which sees the city of Mariupol as the main target) and the one from the east that aims to get the suit control of the Donbass region claimed by the Russians. The attack on Kramatorsk would be the concrete sign of this change of strategy.
Article being updated …
April 8, 2022 (change April 8, 2022 | 12:37)
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