Lviv, Ucrania (CNN) — At least 50 people, including five minors, lost their lives after Russian forces carried out a missile attack against a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, which was being used by civilians trying to flee the fighting, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, where the attack took place, said 98 wounded, 16 children, 46 women and 36 men, had been taken to local hospitals.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said nearly 300 people were injured in the attack.
In a speech to the Finnish Parliament on Friday, Zelensky said that “the Russian military attacked the railway terminal,” adding: “There are witnesses, there are videos, there are remains of the missiles and dead people.”
Zelensky added that “people (were) huddled together waiting for the trains to be evacuated to safe territory.” “Why do they need to hit civilians with missiles? Why this cruelty that the world has witnessed in Bucha and other cities liberated by the Ukrainian Army?” Zelensky asked lawmakers.
Local police said in a statement that the missiles hit a waiting room, where “hundreds of people were waiting for the evacuation train.”
“This is another proof that Russia is brutally and barbarically killing Ukrainian civilians, with only one goal – to kill,” the mayor of Kramatorsk said in a statement.
The mayor said in the last two weeks some 8,000 people a day have come to the station to evacuate. Up to 4,000 people were there at the time the missile hit.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the attack a “deliberate massacre”.
“The Russians knew that the Kramatorsk train station was full of civilians waiting to be evacuated,” he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry issued a statement on Friday calling the missile attack a “provocation”, in a statement reflecting recent denials of the indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Bucha suburb.
“All statements by representatives of the nationalist Kyiv regime about the alleged ‘missile attack’ by Russia on April 8 at the Kramatorsk railway station are a provocation and do not correspond to reality at all,” he says. the notice.
“On April 8, the Russian armed forces did not conduct or plan any artillery fire in the city of Kramatorsk. We underline that the Tochka-U tactical missiles, the remains of which were found near the Kramatorsk railway station and published by eyewitnesses , are used only by the Ukrainian armed forces”.
Ukrainian forces have the Soviet-designed Tochka missile in their inventory, but it has also been used by Russian and separatist forces in the past.
The Russian military and senior officials have widely denied attacks on civilians, recently claiming, without evidence, that the massacre of civilians in Bucha was staged. The killing of civilians during the Russian occupation of the city has been widely documented.
The words “for the children” written on the side of a missile near the Kramatorsk railway station. The video was shared on social media by Ukraine’s President Zelensky shortly after the attack. CNN cannot confirm who wrote the words on the missile.
Crédito:Anatalii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
The eastern city of Kramatorsk was one of the first places to be targeted by Russian military strikes when the invasion of Ukraine was launched on February 24. Ihnatchenko said that the Ukrainians had been using the train station since the end of February to evacuate the region.
“The Russians knew that thousands of people are there (at the train station) every day,” he said.
Two missiles hit the station, according to the head of Ukraine’s national railway system, Oleksandr Kamyshin. Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said the Russian military used Iskander short-range ballistic missiles.
CNN international anchor Christiane Amanpour said the attack was reminiscent of one in a Sarajevo market during the Bosnian war, in which “ordinary civilians were massacred as they went about their daily lives.”
Amanpour said such attacks on civilians tend to harden Western resolve and could push the European Union to enact even more sanctions against Russia. Brussels already approved five rounds of sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine.
Destroyed vehicles outside the Kramatorsk railway station following the missile attack on April 8, 2022.
Civilians gather at the Kramatorsk station to be evacuated from combat zones in eastern Ukraine on April 6.
Crédito: Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The head of the European Union’s diplomacy, Josep Borrell, condemned the “indiscriminate attack”, while the president of the European Union, Charles Michel, described it as “horrifying”.
“This is a new attempt to close the escape routes of those fleeing this unjustified war and causing human suffering,” Borrell said.
Borrell and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are scheduled to meet with President Zelensky this week in Kyiv.
The attack comes as Russian forces prepare for a massive operation in eastern Ukraine to seize the disputed Donbas region, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Donbas is home to the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, two breakaway enclaves that Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized as independent shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.
For nearly eight years, the two regions have been the scene of a low-intensity war between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. More than 14,000 people have been killed in the fighting, and now Kyiv is bracing for more casualties.
Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said the “battle for Donbas” is already underway and the fighting there will be a reminder of the destructive battles during World War II, as Moscow’s offensive could involve “thousands of of tanks, armored vehicles, planes, artillery”.
British intelligence assesses that Russian troops have “completely withdrawn” from northern Ukraine into Belarus and Russia, and many could be moved into eastern Ukraine to fight in Donbas. The Ukrainian military also says they have seen a buildup of Russian forces to the east.
— CNN’s Joshua Berlinger, Julia Presniakova, Ivan Watson and Khrystyna Bondarenko contributed to this report.