Ukraine\u2019s state railway company claimed two Russian rockets had struck a station in the city of Kramatorsk
\n KYIV
\nUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wants a tough global response to Russia after its forces fired a missile at a crowded train station, killing at least 52 people.
\nZelensky\u2019s voice rose in anger during his nightly address late Friday, when he said the strike on the Kramatorsk train station, where 4,000 people were trying to flee a looming Russian offensive in the east, amounted to another war crime.
\nDozens of people were severely injured in the strike, and the dead included children.
\nPhotos taken after the attack showed corpses covered with tarpaulins, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words \u201cFor the children\u201d in Russian. The Russian phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear.
\nThe strike seemed to shock world leaders. \u201cThere are almost no words for it,\u201d European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters during a visit to Ukraine. \u201cThe cynical behavior (by Russia) has almost no benchmark anymore.\u201d The attack came as workers elsewhere in the country unearthed bodies from a mass grave in Bucha, a town near Kyiv, where graphic evidence of dozens of killings emerged following the withdrawal of Russian forces.
\n\u201cLike the massacres in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile attack on Kramatorsk should be one of the charges at the tribunal that must be held,\u201d Zelensky said.
\nAfter failing to take Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance, Russian forces have now set their sights on the eastern Donbas region, the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial area where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and control some places.
\nAlthough the train station is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack. So did the region\u2019s Moscow-backed separatists, who work closely with Russian troops.
\nWestern experts, however, dismissed Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov\u2019s assertion that Russian forces \u201cdo not use\u201d that type of missile. A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said Russia\u2019s forces have used the missile \u2014 and that given the strike\u2019s location and impact, it was likely Russia\u2019s. Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, added that only Russia would have reason to target railway infrastructure in the Donbas, as it is critical for the Ukrainian military\u2019s efforts to reinforce its units.
\nBronk pointed to other occasions when Russian authorities have tried to deflect blame by claiming their forces no longer use an older weapon \u201cto kind of muddy the waters and try and create doubt.\u201d He suggested Russia specifically chose the missile type because Ukraine also possesses them.
\nBritish Defense Minister Ben Wallace denounced the attack as a war crime, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it \u201ccompletely unacceptable.\u201d
\nUkrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of atrocities in the war that began with a Feb. 24 invasion. More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and millions more have been displaced. Some of the grisliest evidence has been found in towns around Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv, from which Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s troops pulled back in recent days.
\nIn Bucha, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk has said investigators found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians and were still finding bodies in yards, parks and city squares \u2014 90 percent of whom were shot. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
\nOn Friday, workers pulled corpses from a mass grave near a church under spitting rain, lining up black body bags in rows in the mud. About 67 people were buried there, according to a statement from Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s state railway company claimed two Russian rockets had struck a station in the city of Kramatorsk KYIV Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wants a tough global response to Russia after its forces fired a missile at a crowded train station, killing at least 52 people. Zelensky\u2019s voice rose in anger during his nightly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-253992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n