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At least 35 civilians were killed this Friday in a rocket attack on the station in the city of Kramatorsk, in the east of Ukrainean area from which thousands of civilians are fleeing for fear of an imminent Russian offensive.
This attack, in which 100 people were also injured, is one of the bloodiest in the six weeks of war and it comes at a time of international outrage at the atrocities that are beginning to be discovered in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it an act of “unlimited evil” on the part of Russia.. But in Moscow, the Defense Ministry denied being the author of the attack and denounced a “provocation” by kyiv.
According to Oleksander Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, it was “a deliberate attack”.
In front of the station Kramatorsk there were several charred cars and the twisted remains of a missile on which the inscription “for our children” could be read in white Russian letters.
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The place was strewn with abandoned suitcases, broken glass, debris and desolation. The interior of the station, from which thousands of people have been evacuated for days, was covered in blood, often trampled and spread out into the street, due to the movement of bodies.
“I’m looking for my husband, he was here but I can’t find him”said a woman without daring to approach the bodies of the victims, lined up outside the station.
Kramatorsk is the capital of Donbas which is still under Ukrainian control. Hours before the attack, an AFP reporter visiting the station saw hundreds of people waiting in line to leave the region for safer parts of the country.
“Escape from Hell”
For days, Russian forces have been concentrating their operations in the east and south of Ukrainein a desire to create a corridor between Crimea, occupied and annexed in 2014 by Moscow, and the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the Ukrainian Donbas.
This forces thousands of civilians to flee to the west and north, although in many cases evacuations are disrupted by shelling.
“It is no secret, the battle for Donbas will be decisive. What we have already experienced, all this horror, can be multiplied”said Luhansk Governor Sergii Gaidai.
Analysts believe that the Russian president Vladimir Putin wants to take control of Donbas before the military parade on May 9which commemorates the end of the Second World War, a very important and symbolic date in Russia.
On Donetskthe regional military official Pavlo Kyrylenko indicated that three trains had been temporarily blocked by a Russian air attack on a station.
“Every day is worse and worse. They rain down on us (bombs) from everywhere. I can’t take it anymore,” said Denis, a gaunt, pale-faced man who looked much older than his 40 years in Severodonetsk, another city in eastern Ukraine. “I want to escape this hell,” he added, as he waited his turn to flee by bus.
“More horrible than Bucha”
At the same time, new reports of atrocities emerge in areas hitherto occupied by the Russians near kyiv, days after the discovery of dozens of civilian bodies in the city of Bucha, at the gates of the capital, images that have generated worldwide revulsion .
“They have started searching the ruins of Borodianka”, in the northwest of kyiv, said Zelensky Thursday night. “It is much more horrible than in Bucha, there are even more victims of the Russian occupiers,” he denounced.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, indicated that so far 26 bodies had been discovered in the rubble of two buildings and warned that it is “the most destroyed city in the region.”
“Only the civilian population was the target of the attacks: there is no military base here,” Venediktova wrote on Facebook.
Complaints also emerged from other areas, such as Obukhovychi, northwest of kyiv, whose inhabitants assured AFP that the Russians used them as human shields.
in the besieged Mariupol (southeast), even the pro-Russian official proclaimed as the new “mayor” has recognized the death of 5,000 civilians in the port city.
Moscow has denied targeting civilians in areas under its control, but mounting evidence of its alleged atrocities has seen Russia suspended from the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.
More sanctions
They also caused the European Union (EU) to decide an embargo on imports of Russian coal and prohibit the entry of Russian ships to its ports. The bloc also backed Thursday a proposal to increase arms supplies to Ukraine by 500 million euros ($543 million).
In a show of support for that country, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, will meet on Friday in kyiv with Zelensky.
Before this appointment, Borrell condemned “firmly” this Friday the attack on the train station in Kramatorsk.
“This is a new attempt to close the evacuation routes for those who flee this unjustified war and cause of human suffering”denounced the person in charge on Twitter.
For its part, the G7, which brings together industrialized nations, also agreed to ban new investments in key sectors and restrictions on exports, in addition to the Russian coal veto.
And this Friday, the United Kingdom announced sanctions on the daughters of the Russian president, Vladimir Putinand his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in a desire to attack the “lavish lifestyle of the circle close to the Kremlin.”
The repercussions of the conflict are felt throughout the world. This Friday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced that world food prices reached “an unprecedented level” in March due to the war in Ukraine, which seriously affects trade in cereals and oils. vegetables.
Source: Elcomercio
