The Russian strike hit the docks as well as the forecourt of the building, killing 52 people and injuring more than 90 others, according to local authorities. Moscow denied any intervention, without convincing.
Photos and films flooding the networks all show the same tragedy. Debris, screams, abandoned luggage, blood and corpses. The sinister result of the missile which on Friday, around 10:30 a.m., fell on Kramatorsk station.
At this hour, the spruce little red and white brick station is full. A dense crowd rushes, about 4000 people according to Mayor Oleksander Honcharenko, to flee the city. The “capital” temporary in the Donbass region is under pressure from the Russian army, threatened with a devastating offensive. So, for days, the Ukrainian authorities have been encouraging the inhabitants to leave for the west for shelter, under penalty of “to lose one’s life”. Thousands followed the instruction, filling the trains, waiting near the station.
“Unbounded Cruelty”
«It tore the air“says a witness. In the panic the quays are quickly deserted. “I saw about fifteen injured, but it is difficult to say how many there were, many were evacuated immediately in cars to hospitals”, remembers a rescuer. On Friday afternoon, the governor of the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, reported on Telegram 52 dead, including 5 children, and more than 90 injured. The boss of the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, Oleksandre Kamyshin, denounced a “deliberate strike”.
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In front of the station, a piece of khaki missile lies, resting on the grass, not far from a proudly restored old locomotive. On his side is tagged in Russian in white paint an incomprehensible “For our children“. It would be a Totchka-U missile, capable of carrying cluster munitions, which seems to be confirmed by the different places in the station hit at the same time.
Moscow immediately denied being responsible for the attack, claiming not to have this type of missile, and denouncing a «provocation» to prevent civilians from fleeing to use them “as human shields”. A reversal of the accusation – a Kremlin classic – already used in Boutcha. Only the Russian Ministry of Defense had indicated earlier on Friday that the Russian army had destroyed with high-precision missiles “arms and military equipment at the stations of Pokrovsk, Sloviansk and Barvinkove», so many localities located not far from Kramatorsk.
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No one paid any attention to the Russian arguments. President Zelensky denounced a “unlimited evil” unleashed by Russia and methods “inhuman”. “Without the strength and courage to face us on the battlefield, they cynically annihilate the civilian population. And if he is not punished, he will never stop”, he wrote on Telegram. The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, has “strongly condemned” a “blind attack”. Emmanuel Macron, for his part, denounced the attack in a tweet «abominable»fearing a large-scale attack on the Donbass.
“The Unthinkable”
Meanwhile, to the south, Russian forces are still trying to seize Mariupol, a besieged and devastated port city. According to the “new mayor”, imposed by the pro-Russian forces, “about 5000 people” died among the civilian population. The Ukrainian authorities put forward a much heavier toll.
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Further north, the region of Sumy, bordering Russia, has been completely liberated from Russian forces. With this departure of troops from the Sumy region, Russia has now completely evacuated northern Ukraine to shift its effort to the east, leaving ravaged towns behind.
New symbol of this violence, the 26 bodies, extracted by Ukrainian rescuers, from the rubble of two apartment buildings in Borodyanka, northwest of kyiv. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, says she fears an even more terrible toll there than in Boutcha. Dozens of civilians were killed there.
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The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, visiting Ukraine on Friday with Josep Borrell, the head of EU diplomacy, gathered at the mass graves dug in Boutcha to shelter their remains. “The unthinkable happened here“, she said, continuing in front of the journalists present: “We have seen the cruel face of Putin’s army. We have seen with what boundless cruelty they occupied the city”. The President of the Commission had previously assured kyiv that “the european wayof Ukraine remains.
The images of this massacre had shocked as much as those of the devastation against the Kramatorsk station. This attack “unconscious” pushed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to step up British military aid to Ukraine, with the dispatch of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced on Friday that his country had supplied the S-300 air defense system to kyiv, a recurring request from the Ukrainian army.