The attack, denounced by some as another war crime in the six-week conflict, came as workers discovered bodies from a mass grave in Bukha, a town near the Ukrainian capital where dozens of killings have been recorded since a Russian withdrawal. Photos from the Kramatorsk station showed the dead covered in tarpaulin and the remains of a rocket with the phrase “For children” in Russian. About 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, listening to calls to leave before fighting intensified in the Donbass region, the ombudsman’s office said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who says he expects a tough global response, and other leaders have accused the Russian military of deliberately attacking the station. Russia, for its part, has blamed Ukraine for not using the kind of missile that struck the station – a claim that experts have denied. Zelensky told the Ukrainians in a video speech Friday night that efforts would be made “to find out every minute who did what, who gave what orders, where the rocket came from, who carried it, who gave the order and how it was agreed.” blow. . » Pavlo Kyrylenko, Donetsk regional governor in Donbas, said 52 people had been killed, including five children, and dozens more injured. “There are a lot of people in serious condition, without arms or legs,” said Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko, adding that the local hospital was struggling to treat everyone. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace denounced the attack as a war crime and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it “completely unacceptable”. “There is almost no word on this,” European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Ukraine. “Cynical behavior (from Russia) has almost no reference point anymore.” Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of atrocities in the war that began with an invasion on February 24. More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country and millions more have been displaced. Some of the most horrific elements have been found in cities around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, from which the troops of Russian President Vladimir Putin have withdrawn in recent days. In Bucha, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators had found at least three mass shooting sites of civilians and were still finding corpses in courtyards, parks and town squares – 90% of which were shot. Russia falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged. On Friday, workers pulled corpses from a mass grave near a city church in torrential rain, lining up black bags in rows in the mud. About 67 people were buried in the grave, according to a statement from the Office of the Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, which is conducting an investigation. “Like the Bucha massacres, like many other Russian war crimes, the Kramatorsk rocket attack should be one of the charges in court,” Zelenskyy said, raising his voice in anger. the manufacture. He made the remarks in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Friday, citing communications intercepted by Ukraine’s security services. “There are (Russian) soldiers talking to their parents (about) what they stole and who they kidnapped. “There are recordings of (Russian) prisoners of war who admitted to killing people,” he said. “There are pilots in the prison who had maps with political targets to bomb. “Searches are also being made based on the remains of the dead.” The Russian forces, who withdrew after failing to occupy the capital in the face of fierce resistance, have now set their sights on Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking, industrial area where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and controlling some areas. A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that the Pentagon believes some of the retreating units have suffered so much damage that “for all intents and purposes they have been eliminated.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments. The official did not say how many units had suffered such extensive damage, but said the United States believed Russia had lost between 15% and 20% of its total combat power since the start of the war. While some combat units are withdrawing to supply supplies to Russia, Moscow has added thousands of troops around Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, he said. The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a Ukrainian government-controlled convoy in Donbas, but Russia insisted it was not behind the attack. The Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine of doing so, in a statement broadcast by the state news agency RIA Novosti. So did the Moscow-backed separatists in the region, who work closely with Russian regular troops. Experts have denied claims by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov that Russian forces “do not use” this type of missile, saying that Russia used it during the war. One analyst added that only Russia would have a reason to target the railway infrastructure in Donbas. “The Ukrainian army is desperately trying to strengthen units in the area… and the train stations in this area in the Ukrainian territory are critical to the movement of equipment and people,” said Justin Bronk, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Bronk pointed to other cases in which Russian authorities sought to divert responsibility by claiming that their forces were no longer using an older weapon “to muddy the waters and try to create suspicion.” He also suggested that Russia specifically chose the type of missile because Ukraine also has it. A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the information, also said that Russian forces had used the missile – and that given the location and impact of the strike, it was “likely” Russian. Ukrainian officials are urging Western powers almost daily to send more weapons and further punish Russia with sanctions and the exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system. NATO nations agreed on Thursday to increase arms supplies, and Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced during a visit to Ukraine on Friday that his country had donated the Soviet S-300 air defense system to Ukraine. Zelensky had called for S-300s to help the country “close the skies” on Russian warplanes and missiles. US and Slovak officials have said the United States will then deploy a Patriot missile system in Slovakia. Following a meeting with Zelensky on Friday, in which he urged the EU to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and gas, von der Leyen provided him with a questionnaire, the first step in applying for EU membership. Kevin Spacey asks judge to get rid of Anthony Rapp’s sexual abuse suit, Groomer debate sparks GOP controversy over Florida law In anticipation of intensifying attacks by Russian forces, hundreds of Ukrainians fled villages that were either under fire or occupied in the southern areas of Mykolaiv and Kherson. In Kharkov, Lidiya Mezhiritska stood in the rubble of her home after overnight rocket attacks turned it into rubble. “The ‘Russian world,’ as they say,” he said, ironically referring to Putin’s nationalist excuse for invading Ukraine. “People, children, the elderly, women are dying. I do not have a machine gun. I would definitely go (fight), regardless of age “.
