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LAST UPDATE | 8 Apr 2022
A ROCKET STRIKE has killed 50 people and injured over 100 others at a train station being used to evacuate civilians in eastern Ukraine, authorities in the war-torn country said.
Fifty people were killed, including five children, the regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said as the toll rose on one of the deadliest strikes of the six-week-old war.
The head of Ukraine’s railways Alexander Kamyshin said that two rockets hit the station. Earlier reports said that at least 30 people were killed.
Thousands were at the station at the time of the strike, preparing to evacuate to safer regions as Russia focuses its troops on eastern Ukraine, Kyrylenko added.
Reacting to the latest attack on civilians, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said around 300 people had been injured, and described Russia as an “evil with no limits”.
“They are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop,” Zelenskyy said on Instagram.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said “the horrific attack is further evidence of the barbaric nature of Russia’s war on Ukraine”.
This is genocide. And those responsible must be held to account.
AFP journalists on the scene saw at least 30 bodies of people grouped and lying under plastic sheets next to the station.
Blood was pooling on the ground and packed bags were strewn outside the building in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
The journalists said four cars next to the station had been destroyed and the remains of a large rocket with the words “for our children” in Russian were lying adjacent to the main building.
Bodies were later seen being loaded onto a military truck.
Russian denials
As it has done with previous attacks on civilians in Ukraine, Russia denied that it was involved in the rocket strike.
“All statements by representatives of the Kyiv nationalist regime about the ‘rocket attack’ allegedly carried out by Russia on April 8 at the railway station in the city of Kramatorsk are a provocation and are absolutely untrue,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.
EU Council chief Charles Michel accused Russia of a “horrifying” act, saying Moscow was cutting off an escape route for civilians.
“Horrifying to see Russia strike one of the main stations used by civilians evacuating the region where Russia is stepping up its attack,” Michel wrote on Twitter.
“I strongly condemn this morning’s indiscriminate attack…by Russia” EU foreign policy Josep Borrell said in a separate tweet.
Kramatorsk was hit by Russian strikes earlier this week but had otherwise largely been spared the destruction witnessed by other east Ukraine cities since Russia’s invasion.
Ukrainian authorities warned residents in the east of the country to flee westwards immediately in advance of an anticipated Russian attack.
Additional reporting from Press Association and Céimin Burke
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Animals
@UK Hurling Bloke: cats, except cats.
Deliberately targeting civilians and refugees.
There should be no road back for any leader involved in perpetuating these atrocities.
There should be no further oil imports from Russia, It may be hard but the EU cannot continue any funding via fossil fuels of Putins war machine.
This carnage is being paid for by us all.
Think it’s time the West started taking a bit of pain and start cutting of Russian oil and gas as quickly as practical.
@Tomás Barrett: time for Germany to sanction Russian oil and gas. Nothing less.
Sickening. As Blinken said recently, we cannot become numb to this. It is a very grim state of affairs when Russians bombing a train station full of civilians is no longer viewed as surprising.
@Derek Murphy: If you’d told me a year ago there would be a rocket attack on a train station in a European city in which thirty people are killed, I would have assumed ISIS or similar would be the perpetrators. And yet here we are. State sanctioned murder.
@Derek Murphy: Yes it is absolutely awful. But, you’ve a short memory. Do you not remember the NATO warplane blowing up a passenger train in the Balkan war in the former Yugoslavia?
@Kevin Farrell: The only people that remember that are the CCP. They use that as a load of whataboutery while they commit genocide in Xinjiang. One NATO strike doesn’t compare with Russia committing warcrimes on a daily basis in full view of the world.
@Kevin Farrell: Not sure how you can conclude I have a short memory based on the five sentences I wrote above. Hardly going to caveat all statements I make with references to every unpleasant event in history. You can justify any war crime you want by pointing to something in the past (including the bombing from over 20 years ago which you reference). That doesn’t make what Russia is doing OK.
@Kevin Farrell: Kevin please stop justifying this murder of innocent people. It is not ok just because there are other examples of it in history.
Just as an aside After srebrenica nato had to stop the Serbian genocide of the Muslims. I am glad they did as it brought an end to the war. I am also glad some of the Serbs responsible were held to account.
@Kevin Farrell:
Ignorance is strength.
Do you agree with that statement?
@Kevin Farrell: difference is that with Russian atrocities you only have to remember the day before or the one before that, in fact every day since early february
@Kevin Farrell: You should be ashamed of yourself, trying to draw false-equivalence to deflect from the genocidal systematic murder of Ukrainian civilians by Russian Nazi forces. If you want to invoke the former Yugoslavia, why not also discuss the direct Russian support of the Serbian war criminals and the associated slaughter which the russians facilitated. That anybody should seek to deflect from such evil is just sickening.
@Tom Purcell: Absolutely, but let’s leave the Nazis out of it. Not because I like Nazis, top of any list of evil organisations, but because invoking the Nazis (as Putin did) is a common strategy used to justify violent acts against innocent people (I’m not saying that this was your intention).
Any b&3tard pro Vlad bots who still believe this is some way anybody elses fault other than those behind the rocket launchers aimed at civilians, can just pack up off to Russia. Absolute savages targeting civilians escaping, disgusting excuse for humans.
Get in there and stop that warmonger. Just stop him.
@Marcus Massey: quick General, draw up a plan. I’ll get fastway on the phone, they’ll be on standby to deliver it to whoever.
@TomTraubert: People are rightly angry and just expressing that.
And here we have you, just trying to be smart …. how sad. Do you have friends Tom?
@Pablo: plenty. None as myopic as just shouting slogans and leaving at that. Put some meat on the bones.
@TomTraubert: Do you actually write your comments while under the influence. Its the only explanation I can see for your abject ig-nor-ance.
@TomTraubert: You can’t just cut people some slack around this, no? you want a nuanced discourse. And yet your own contributions on the journal over the last few years have been filled with snide, low brow remarks, always playing the antagonist. It appears you come here to inflate your self esteem and try to feel superior. Maybe you need new friends.
@Pablo: to you and Franny, it was a joke fgs. People need to lighten up here ff s
@TomTraubert: ‘People need to lighten up here’ he says, on an article about civilians dying while trying to flee a war…
@TomTraubert: Tom, you’re probably not a bad bloke, young I’m guessing ..but ffs learn to read the room.
He wanted too leave behind a legacy but he’s going down in the books next too Hitler
@Gavin Lynam: that’s a legacy too. Not a great one, but a legacy nonetheless. He’s nuts.
@Gavin Lynam: Everything about the invasion seemed rushed. At almost 70 and with no male heir apparent, it feels like the attempted integration of Ukraine back into Russian control, was his desired legacy jewel. In this regard he has completely and utterly failed and turned Russia into an absolute pariah state for decades to come and caused death and suffering to millions. A true text book definition psychopath
@Tom Cullen: Well said
Mental. The mindset of this man isn’t worth trying to understand. What’s worse is the denying and justification.
The nazi party is alive and well and ruling Russia
It’s time for some rockets to find their way in the other direction.
Russian media…. “Ukraine did this to make us look bad”… There must be a hell for these fuggers to go to afterlife because nothing in this world could be painfull enough for them.
I was personally glad that NATO intervened in that war. What the Serbs did in srebrenica – killing 8,000 muslim men and boys was still worse than anything we have seen in Ukraine. NATO stopped this genocide. Where you ok with what the Serbs did then and were you happy with them continuing?
That’s precisely in the middle of the pinch point where the Russians could cut off the Ukrainian ace forces who’ve been fighting in the Donbas for years. They may be doing this to lure these forces in, the basterds.
Rotten to the core this Putin lowlife is …..Hope he dies roaring !! For what he’s done to the people of Ukraine
I’ve seen claims that it’s a Tochka-U rocket, which is no longer used by the Russians, but is used by the Ukrainians. Who knows what you can believe, though. There’s so much propaganda flying around.
@bread of heaven: Here’s video of 8 Russian Tochka-U missile launchers in Belarus in the way to Ukraine a week ago.
https://twitter.com/MotolkoHelp/status/1509099435262976000
So Russia does use the Tochka-U missile, they took them lout of storage. Also, this video footage of the launch of 2 Tochka-U missile in rebel held area of DNR today indicates the missile that hit Kramatorsk was launched by pro-Russian rebels:
https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1512371222125948932
That if one of these missiles hit Kramatorsk train station. Indeed, the rebels would be the type that would carry out such a terrorist attack. The missile has a 70 m accuracy, not very accurate buy accurate enough to target the Train Station.
Today’s attack on Kramatorsk might be a revenge for a Ukrainian Tochka-U attack on Donetsk 3 weeks ago, that Russia and the rebels said killed 20 civilians (Russia also claims the missile was launched from near Pokrovsk, 40km from Kramatorsk).
@David Jordan: That sounds like the most likely explanation.
@bread of heaven: Got a question for ya…….
I did a post earlier talking about this exact same thing as I knew someone would mention it …. but the journal didn’t post it – maybe because it had a link to a website established in 2015 that has articles about all wars, military and stuff like that – and they mentioned that Russia had rolled these back out. It’s not a new website only 34 days old that only deals with Ukraine, like some posters on other articles have mentioned, but a website with years of articles.
But I digress … My question for you, …. one who claims to seek the truth judging by your post history, is why didn’t you do a basic search and find the information myself and David were able to find ? Do you just regurgitate cr@p you see on twitter without even doing any research, or are you just a flog spreading nonsense? It’s a rhetorical question, I know the answer.
Pure Slaughter that’s what that is. Animal!
What exactly is Putin trying to achieve by doing something like this? The invasion is bad enough but bombing civilians is whole other level of evil
Russians must think the world is clueless. Rocket has nothing to do with them
This evil act at Kramatorsk railway station was carried out by SS’elenskiy’s Ukrainian NaziSS for sure but the Western Media propaganda machine will not report this truth.
It was a Ukrainian missile, made by Ukrainians and fired by NATO backed Ukrainian Nazi tormentors.
Please stop telling lies about this US REGIME and NATO orchestrated tragic Crisis in Ukraine.
This incitement to hatred against Russia must stop.
It just feeds the Hubris and Arrogance of the US REGIME that wants to prolong this agony for its own dirty rotten intentions.
@Mike Walsh: you need to up your troll game bud
@Mike Walsh: Russia defence is that they don’t use these rockets. That has been proven to be a lie as there are satellite images of them having them in Ukraine. So when Russia has been proven to lie again and again why do you continue to believe everything they say. If you are Irish – shame on you.
@Mike Walsh: at first I thought you’re writing from the Russian troll farm but more likely you’re just a useful 1diot
Russians must think the world is clueless. Rocket has nothing to do with them
@Barry Wilson: — Nothing is ever anything to do with Putin’s regime, Novichok poisonings, Malaysian airline getting shot down, framing the opposition, and locking them up if the poison doesn’t work. Their own people believe all the crap, because they don’t get any news from external sources, and if they do get news they’re then convinced that the news is made up and the “evil” West is out to get them. All this because of some sh!t stirring paranoid weasel in the Kremlin with small man syndrome. There’s no place on this planet for people like him, he’s centuries after his time.
50 dead, over 100 injured…that picture doesn’t paint a 1000 words…looks like someone’s burnt out lawnmower engine in the front garden.
Ignorance is strength. Do you agree?
Time to cut off all exports from Russia.Short term pain for long term gain. Makes you wonder about the proposed Russian naval maneuvers off the west coast of ireland last month.The Ukrainians were going about their normal day to day living when that butcher turned their world upside down.
Think mick Walsh is working in the embassy with the outburst .
have your say