At least 35 people were killed in a rocket attack Friday on a train station in Donbass, where civilians are crowding to flee this region of eastern Ukraine targeted by Russian forces, while European officials are expected in kyiv .
Kramatorsk station, the “capital” of Donbass under Ukrainian control, was the target of rockets and AFP journalists saw at least twenty bodies under plastic bags in front of the station, used for the evacuation of civilians from the region. The emergency services mentioned at least 35 dead and 100 injured.
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 objective. It multiplies its attacks in the South and the East, the Ukrainian authorities striving 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, indicated the governor of the Lugansk region, Serguiï Gaïdaï, who had been encouraging for several days the inhabitants to part not to “condemn themselves to death”.
“Three evacuation trains carrying residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk region were able to leave for the west. The track has been repaired,” he said early Friday, before the attack on Kramatorsk station, the “capital” of Donbass under Ukrainian control.
This new attack should further increase the pressure on Russia, accused of war crimes, particularly in Boutcha.
The day after the adoption of a new EU sanctions package against Moscow, with an embargo on Russian coal, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell announced that they were on the way to Kyiv.
“Looking forward to kyiv,” Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter, accompanying her message with a photo of her with Mr. Borrell and the Slovak Prime Minister, on a station platform next to a train in the colors of Ukraine. “I’m going to kyiv,” tweeted Mr. Borrell.
The surroundings of the Ukrainian capital, from which the Russian army withdrew, was the scene of atrocities of which Ukraine and its allies accuse the forces of Moscow, which denies and evokes Ukrainian “provocations”.
This is particularly the case in Boutcha, 30 km north-west of kyiv, bombarded then occupied for a month by Russian soldiers, and where dozens of corpses dressed in civilian clothes, some of them with their hands tied behind their backs, were discovered after their departure.
Looting
On Thursday residents returned there cautiously, like Hanna Predko, 31, who had fled the city with her three children, from the first bombings on February 24. “We are very happy that our armed forces succeeded in driving these bastards away. Now everyone knows about this place, unfortunately with a huge price,” she exclaims.
His mother, Natalia Predko, 69, accompanies him. The two women are delighted to have found safe and sound their father and husband, who never wanted to leave.
A retired policeman, Boris, 63, who lives in the nearby town of Vorzel, which was also occupied, says that when the Russian soldiers withdrew from the area, “they took everything they could with them. They looted everything, their armored vehicles were overflowing with stolen things”.
The Ukrainian authorities claim to fear the discovery of other massacres and the President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation in Borodyanka, near kyiv, was “much worse” than in Boutcha.
“There are more victims,” he said in a video message, as 26 bodies were extracted there from the rubble of two apartment buildings, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova.
In terms of military operations, Russian forces are now focusing on the complete capture of Donbass, an industrial and Russian-speaking region partly controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.
In addition to the areas north of kyiv, the Russian army is no longer present in the Sumy region, bordering Russia in the Northeast, which has been completely “liberated”, the head of the administration announced on Friday. regional Dmytro Zhivitsky.
“Free from the Orcs”
“The territory of the region is liberated from the Orcs,” Mr. Jivitsky announced on Telegram, using the nickname, taken from the book “The Lord of the Rings”, which is frequently given to Russian soldiers in Ukraine. He added, however, that the area was “not safe” and that clearance operations were underway.
The Russian Ministry of Defense indicated for its part on Friday that the Russian army had destroyed with high precision missiles “arms and military equipment in the stations of Pokrovsk, Sloviansk and Barvinkove”, in the Donbass or just next door.
“A reception and training center for foreign mercenaries in Krasnosilka, northeast of Odessa” was also destroyed by missiles, according to the ministry. The City Council of Odessa had reported Thursday evening of a missile attack on infrastructure.
On Thursday, AFP journalists witnessed the evacuation of civilians by bus from Severodonetsk, the easternmost town held by Ukrainian forces, pounded by Russian troops. “It’s falling everywhere.
It’s no longer possible, ”lamented Denis, a forty-year-old as pale as a sheet, with an emaciated face, who would be considered to be in his sixties.
A “large number” of these evacuees have already arrived in Dnipro, an industrial city of one million inhabitants on the Dnieper, the river which marks the limit of the eastern regions of the country, according to the mayor of this locality.
“Insult to humanity”
Following the wave of indignation that followed the broadcast of images of Boutcha in particular, Russia was suspended on Thursday by a vote of the UN Human Rights Council.
US President Joe Biden, who had had a new set of “devastating” economic sanctions adopted the day before, described as “an insult to humanity” the “indications of rape, torture, executions”, assuring that “ Russia’s lies do not hold up against the indisputable evidence of what is happening in Ukraine”.
The G7 countries have followed in the footsteps of sanctions, including a ban on all new investment in key sectors of Russia.
And the European Union has also adopted a new set of punitive measures, including an embargo on Russian coal. This is the very first time that the Europeans have hit the Russian energy sector, on which they are very dependent.
The EU imports 45% of its coal from Russia for a value of 4 billion euros per year. This embargo will come into force at the beginning of August.
Japan has also announced that it will ban the import of Russian coal.
Brussels plans to ban exports to Russia up to 10 billion euros, new sanctions against Russian banks and the closure of European ports to Russian ships.
At the same time, the EU is ready to release an additional €500 million to fund arms for Ukraine.
kyiv is calling for the “immediate” supply of arms, before it is too late to face a new Russian offensive in the East.
NATO promised Thursday through the voice of its Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, “significant support”.
Many observers believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is desperate to take Donbass before the May 9 military parade marking the end of World War II, the most important celebration in Russia.