Ukrainian officials say a Russian airstrike targeted the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 and injuring 100.
The local mayor said four thousand people were at the station – mostly women and children – and many were desperate to flee a part of the country that has been relentlessly attacked in recent days.
“The Russians are deliberately trying to disrupt the evacuation of civilians,” the City Council said in a statement.
“They clearly saw that they were hitting civilians early in the morning, that at the station at this time there were thousands of people trying to evacuate, families, children, elderly,” Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Facebook.
“Photos provided by Ukrainian officials showed people splayed on the ground, surrounded by scattered luggage and debris. In a video from the scene, a woman screams, “There are so many corpses, there are children, there are just children!” writes The New York Times.
“This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, accusing Russia of “cynically destroying the civilian population,” out of frustration with its subpar military campaign.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Russia denied the strike but said it had been targeting train stations in the nearby Donbas towns and cities of Pokrovsk, Slovyansk and Barvinkove to destroy Ukrainian military hardware arriving into the region. Violence has repeatedly thwarted evacuation attempts across Ukraine, including outside the southern Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk.
The Washington Post adds:
The deadly strike came as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She made the trip a day after the European Union approved a plan to phase out Russian coal by mid-August, a move spurred by global outrage after the brutal slaying of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
“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, the president of the European Council wrote on Twitter. “Action is needed: more sanctions on Russia and more weapons to Ukraine are under way from the EU.”
