Fifty people were killed, including five children, at the Kramatorsk station and about 100 were injured, the Donetsk administration said. “Thousands of people were at the station during the rocket attack as residents of Donetsk Oblast were evacuated to safer areas of Ukraine,” said Pavlo Kirilenko, head of the region’s military-civilian administration. The attack came as Ukraine prepared for Moscow to intensify its offensive in areas it does not control in the Donbass region – which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces – having largely withdrawn from territory north of Kiev. Referring to the Russian forces, Kyrylenko said that “they knew well where they were aiming and what they wanted” in the attack on Kramatorsk. “They wanted to accept as many peaceful people as possible, they wanted to destroy everything Ukrainian,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the station had been hit by Russian regular Tochka ballistic missiles. “Not having the strength and courage to face us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. “This evil has no limits,” he said. Unconfirmed videos posted on social media by the Ukrainian railway company showed police walking around corpses at the site of the strike. Luggage scattered on a platform after the rocket attack © Ukrainian President’s Telegram Channel / AP Charles Michel, President of the European Council, described the attack as “frightening”. “Action is needed: more sanctions on Russia and more weapons on Ukraine are being pursued by the EU,” he said. The bloc is already discussing a new set of measures, having agreed on a package this week targeting Russian coal exports and dozens of oligarchs in the wake of the mass killing of civilians in Bucha and other suburbs of Kiev. In Kramatorsk, eyewitnesses recall hearing two explosions after rockets hit the station as people waited to board a train scheduled to depart 30 minutes later. Ukrzaliznytsia, the Ukrainian railway company, told the Telegram channel: “This is a deliberate blow to the passenger infrastructure of the railway and the people of Kramatorsk.” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said: “The Russians knew that the Kramatorsk railway station was full of people waiting to be evacuated. However, they hit it with a ballistic missile. . . This was a deliberate massacre. “We will bring every war criminal to justice.” Russia’s Defense Ministry initially said it had used high-precision rockets to attack three Ukrainian railway stations in Donbass, which it claimed housed “armaments and military equipment of the Ukrainian reserves”. But after it became clear the size of the civilian casualties, Russia denied any involvement in the attack, which it said was a “challenge” that “has nothing to do with reality.” The Defense Ministry said: “Russian forces had no plans to shoot at targets in Kramatorsk on April 8.” He claimed that the missiles used in the attack were used exclusively by Ukrainian forces.

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More than six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow troops have largely withdrawn from northern Kiev after failing to occupy the capital, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials. However, they are being reorganized and re-equipped in an effort to move to the eastern part of Donbass, where Kramatorsk is located. Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, said Russia’s attacks on civilian targets had underscored the need for Kiev’s western allies to supply it with more modern, more long-range weapons. Speaking to the Financial Times and other news outlets during a visit to Bucha, where reports of widespread civilian atrocities surfaced this week, Reznikov said: “You can see the atrocities in civilian areas. There are no military installations or military targets [here]. Just a citizen. It is the same in Bucha, Irpin, Dmytrivka and today you can see it in Kramatorsk.

Reznikov said Ukraine needed multi-launcher missile systems, tanks, armored vehicles, anti-ship missiles and a standard-caliber NATO artillery to launch an offensive against Russian forces in the east and south. “We need more long-range weapons. We can prevent them [with anti-tank weapons]. “But we have to keep them out,” he said, adding that Kyiv was “changing its philosophy” for the next phase of the war. Reznikov said Ukrainian forces needed little training to operate anti-ship missiles or US or German tanks. Friday’s strike in Kramatorsk follows an attack on Thursday on a nearby railway bridge, 35km from the front line. The strike hampered efforts to evacuate civilians from the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. On Thursday, Serhiy Haidai, head of Ukraine’s military administration in Luhansk, said Russian forces were regrouping and would “try to carry out an attack” within three to four days. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian military claims can be verified independently. Video: The battle of the radio waves of Ukraine

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