Abandoned suitcases, stuffed animals and food littered the platforms and surroundings of the red and white pedimented Kramatorsk station, from which thousands of people have been evacuated in recent days. At least fifty people, including five children, were killed there in a missile strike on Friday, April 8. Hundreds of civilians rushed there to flee eastern Ukraine, the target of Russian forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced an act “inhuman”, but for which Moscow denies any responsibility. “Without the strength and courage to face us on the battlefield, they cynically annihilate the civilian population. It is an evil that has no limit. And if he is not punished, he will never stop”he added on Telegram.
The head of French diplomacy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, considered that this deadly attack targeting civilians was a matter of “ crime against humanity “.
“Fifty dead, including five children”wrote on Telegram messaging regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, stating that 38 people died on the spot and twelve in hospital, out of 98 people hospitalized in total.
“For our children”
The missile fell around 10:30 a.m. (9:30 a.m. in Paris), at a time when candidates for evacuation have been gathering for days by the hundreds in Kramatorsk station to flee Donbass, now a priority objective for the Russian army.
Journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw at least thirty bodies in body bags or under tarpaulins in front of the station. “I’m looking for my husband, he was there, I can’t reach him”said a woman, trembling and in tears, hesitating to approach the bodies, her phone glued to her ear.
Another, also traumatized, was looking for her passport in the abandoned cases. “I was in the station, I heard like a double explosion, I rushed against the wall to protect myself. I then saw people bleeding into the station, bodies all over the ground, I don’t know if they were injured or dead. The soldiers rushed to tell us to evacuate the station, I left everything here. »
The sidewalks were stained with traces of blood and, on the forecourt in front of the station, the remains of a missile were still visible. It could be read in Russian “for our children”. A sentence that sounds like revenge, a recurring expression of pro-Russian separatists in reference to their children killed since the first Donbass war, which began in 2014.
A “crime against humanity”
This bloody attack on the ” capital city “ of the part of Donbass under Ukrainian control reinforced the international indignation which followed the images of massacres in localities from which the Russian army withdrew around kyiv. The strike was described as“despicable attack” by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who arrived in Ukraine for a support visit, accompanied by the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell.
Both went in the late afternoon to Boutcha, a small town northwest of kyiv that was bombed and then occupied by Russian soldiers and where dozens of corpses wearing civilian clothes, some with their hands tied behind their backs, were discovered in early April, sparking outrage.
The bombing of the Kramatorsk station is part of the ” crime against humanity “, declared on France 5 the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian. “These crimes cannot go unpunished”he hammered, also referring to the massacres of civilians perpetrated in the suburbs of kyiv. “We need experts quickly because we have to see quickly, we have to document urgently in order to then be able to provide evidence of crimes against humanity”he noted.
French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, castigated an action “abominable”German Chancellor Olaf Scholz talking about an attack “appalling”.
Denial of Moscow
Moscow immediately denied being responsible, claiming not to have the type of missile that would have been used and denouncing a ” provocation “ Ukrainian. However, from March 6, an investigation by the collective Conflict Intelligence Team noted the use of the same missiles by Russia in the Chernihiv region; the day before, videos shot in Belarus showed Russian launchers moving towards the Ukrainian border.
The Russian Ministry of Defense then accused “the kyiv regime” having “orchestrated” hit her for “prevent the departure of the population of the city in order to be able to use it as a human shield”.
Moscow regularly denounces ” Provocation “ Ukrainians to defend themselves against accusations of abuse and war crimes, as recently concerning Boutcha. The Russian Defense Ministry announced earlier on Friday that the Russian military had destroyed with high-precision missiles “armaments and other military equipment at the stations of Pokrovsk, Sloviansk and Barvinkove”localities all located not far from Kramatorsk.
After withdrawing its troops from the kyiv region and northern Ukraine, Russia has made the conquest of Donbass, part of which has been controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists, its priority. It multiplies the attacks in the South and the East, the Ukrainian authorities endeavoring, as for them, to evacuate the civilians.
Evacuations by train, which had been interrupted due to the destruction of part of the railway, had resumed overnight from Thursday to Friday, according to the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhi Haïdaï, who had been encouraging for several days its inhabitants to leave so as not to “condemning oneself to death”.