Chernihiv, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian leaders predict that retreating Russian troops to focus on eastern Ukraine will lead to more horrific discoveries in recovered cities and towns, where officials say a Russian rocket attack on a packed train station killed more than 30 civilians. People used to take Friday.
Hours after warning that Ukrainian forces had already found a worse scene of brutality in a settlement north of Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky said “thousands” of people were at a station in Kramatorsk, a town in the eastern Donetsk region, when it struck. A missile
Zelenskyy shows a train car with photos with a social media post that has broken windows, abandoned luggage and corpses lying in what looks like an outdoor waiting area. Authorities say more than 100 people were injured in the strike.
“The inhumane Russians are not changing their ways. “Without the strength or courage to stand by us on the battlefield, they are brutally destroying the civilian population,” he said. “It is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop.”
After failing to seize the Ukrainian capital, Russia has shifted its focus to Donbass, a predominantly Russian-speaking industrial area in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and controlling some areas.
Ukrainian officials this week warned residents to leave for safer parts of the country as soon as possible, saying they and Russia had previously agreed to establish multiple eviction routes. Kramatorsk is located in government-controlled territory.
In his video address of the night, Zelensky predicted that more horrific discoveries would be made in the northern cities and towns that the Russians had withdrawn from the center of eastern Ukraine. He says evidence of the killing of civilians in the vicinity and dumping on the streets in Bucha has already been exposed in a worse way in Borodianka, another settlement outside the capital.
“And what will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian troops did in Mariupol?” Zelensky said late Thursday, referring to the besieged southern port, which has suffered the most since Russia invaded Ukraine. “Everywhere you look today, the tide of protectionist sentiment is flowing. The same cruelty. The same horrible crime. “
NATO countries agreed to increase their arms supplies after Ukraine’s foreign minister asked for weapons from the alliance and other sympathetic countries to help counter a previously expected attack, sparked by reports that Russian forces had carried out atrocities in the vicinity of the capital.
Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk says investigators have found at least three locations where civilians were shot during the Russian occupation. He said most of the victims were killed by gunfire, not by gunfire, and some of the bodies were handcuffed and thrown into “mass fire-like” mass graves, including one in a children’s camp.
Federuk said the deaths of 320 civilians had been confirmed as of Wednesday, but he hoped more because more bodies had been found in the town, which was home to 50,000 people. Only 3,800 left, he said.
In his nightly speech, Zelensky said Booker’s horror could only begin. In the town of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Bucha, he warned of more casualties, saying “there it is more terrible.”
Several Ukrainian and Western leaders have blamed Moscow’s forces for the massacre. According to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Germany’s foreign intelligence service has intercepted radio messages among Russian troops discussing the killing of civilians. Russia has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once.
A Kremlin spokesman said on Thursday that Russia had suffered heavy casualties in a six-week military operation in Ukraine.
“Yes, our troops have suffered significant losses and this is a huge tragedy for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sky News.
Peskov further hinted that “the war may end in the near future,” telling Sky that Russian troops were “doing their best to end that operation.”
On Thursday, a day after Russian forces began shelling their village in the southern Mykolaiv region, Sergei Dubovyenko, 52, fled north to Bashtanka with his wife and mother-in-law in his small blue lada, where they sought refuge in a church.
In Pavlo-Marianovka “they have started destroying houses and everything”, he said. “Then the tanks appeared from the jungle. We thought there would be another shelling in the morning, so I decided to leave. “
Hundreds of people have fled villages in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions that are either under attack or occupied by Russian forces.
Marina Morozova and her husband fled from Kherson, the first major city to fall to the Russians.
“They are waiting for a big war. We saw shells that did not explode. It was terrible, ”he said.
Morozova, 69, said only Russian television and radio were available. He said the Russians provided humanitarian assistance and filmed the distribution.
Anxious to move away from the Russian troops, the couple and others boarded a van that would take them west. Some will try to leave the country, others will stay in the quiet part of Ukraine.
The United Nations estimates that at least 6.5 million people have been displaced by the war.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says more than 4.3 million children, half of them children, have fled Ukraine since Russia began its aggression on February 24 and Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 12 million people are trapped in Ukraine.
The UN humanitarian chief told the Associated Press on Thursday that he was “not optimistic” about securing a ceasefire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and Moscow this week due to a lack of trust between the two sides. He was speaking just hours after accusing Ukraine of backtracking on a proposal made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Crimea and Ukraine’s military status.
Two top EU officials and the Slovak prime minister traveled to Kyiv on Friday to seek EU support for Ukraine. Prime Minister Edward Hager said he, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borel had offers of trade and humanitarian assistance to Zelensky and his government.
As part of that, Hager says “offering grain transportation options, including wheat.” Ukraine is a major world wheat supplier and Russia’s war against Ukraine is creating deficits, especially in the Middle East.
Western nations have stepped up sanctions and seven major world powers have warned that they will continue to use force until Russian troops leave Ukraine.
The US Congress on Thursday voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban its oil imports, while the EU approved other new measures, including a ban on coal imports. Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly has voted to expel Russia from the world’s top human rights body.
U.S. President Joe Biden says the UN vote demonstrates how “Putin’s war has turned Russia into an international paradigm.” He called the images from Bucha “horrible.”
“Symptoms of rape, torture, and the death penalty – in some cases their bodies have been defiled – are an outrage for our common humanity,” Biden said.
(Copyright (c) 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
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