More flee as Ukraine warns of stepped-up Russian attacks
KYIV, UKRAINE
Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine on Saturday, a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station where thousands clamored to leave before an expected Russian onslaught.
More than six weeks after Russia first invaded Ukraine, it has pulled its troops from the northern part of the country, around Kyiv, and refocused on the Donbas region in the east. Western military analysts said an arc of territory in eastern Ukraine was under Russian control, from KharUkrainian kiv — Ukraine’s secondlargest city — in the north to Kherson in the south.
But Ukrainian counterattacks are threatening Russian control of Kherson, according to the Western assessments, and Ukrainian forces are repelling Russian assaults elsewhere in the Donbas region in the southeast.
Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to get out ahead of an imminent, stepped-up offensive by Russian forces in the east. With trains not running out of Kramatorsk on Saturday, panicked residents boarded buses or looked for other ways to leave, fearing the kind of unrelenting assaults and occupations by Russian invaders that delivered food shortages, demolished buildings and death to other cities elsewhere in Ukraine.
“It was terrifying. The horror, the horror,” one resident told British broadcaster Sky, recalling Friday’s attack on the train station. “Heaven forbid, to live through this again. No, I don’t want to.”
Ukraine’s state railway company said in a statement that residents of Kramatorsk and other parts of the country’s contested Donbas region could flee through other train stations. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned for Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the train station attack the latest example of war crimes by Russian forces and said it should motivate the West to do more to help his country defend itself.
Russia denied it was responsible and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to turn blame for civilian casualties on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to bolster the argument.
Western experts and
authorities insisted that Russia launched the weapon. Remnants of the rocket had the words “For the children” in Russian painted on it. The phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear.
Western experts dismissed Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that Russian forces “do not use” Tochka-U missiles, the type that hit the train station, which is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas.
The attack came as Ukrainian authorities worked to identify victims and document possible war crimes by Russian soldiers in northern Ukraine. The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graphic evidence of civilian slayings emerged after the Russians withdrew, said search teams were still finding bodies of people shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.
Workers unearthed the 67 bodies Friday from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of committing atrocities in the war that began with Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. A total of 176 children have been killed, while 324 more have been wounded, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.
Speaking to AP inside the heavily guarded presidential office complex in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said he is committed to negotiating a diplomatic end to the war even though Russia has “tortured” Ukraine. He also acknowledged that peace likely will not come quickly. Talks so far have not included Russian President Vladimir Putin or other top officials.
“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That’s why it is important to stop this war,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities have said they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.
As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theater last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.
Military analysts had predicted for weeks that Russia would succeed in taking Mariupol but said Ukrainian defenders were still putting up a fight. The city’s location on the Sea of Azov is critical to establishing a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.
Many civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscowbacked rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region.
Ukrainian officials have pleaded with Western powers almost daily to send more arms, and to further punish Russia with sanctions, including the exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system and a total European Union embargo on Russian gas and oil.
The deaths of civilians at the train station brought renewed expressions of outrage from Western leaders and pledges that Russia would face further reprisals. On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry tried to counter the dominant international narrative by again raising the specter of Ukraine planting false flags and misinformation.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a previously unannounced trip to Kyiv, pledging an additional military aid and other support.
Zelenskyy after the meeting hailed Johnson as “one of the most principled opponents of the Russian invasion” and said he expects the U.K. will play a “key role” in security guarantees for Ukraine.
Johnson praised Zelenskyy’s leadership and the heroism of the people of Ukraine throughout Russia’s invasion, now into its seventh week. He termed the killing of civilians by Russian troops under the guidance of President Vladimir Putin in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, as “war crimes.”
“Together with friends and partners, we — the U.K. and others — supply the equipment, the technology, the know-how, the intelligence, so that Ukraine will never be invaded again,” Johnson said. “So that Ukraine is so fortified and so protected that Ukraine can never be bullied again, never be blackmailed again, never be threatened.”
A key member of Finland’s ruling coalition opened the door to a potential NATO membership bid in yet another sign the Nordic country is nearing an application to join the defense alliance following neighboring Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The Center Party, part of a five-party cabinet run by Social Democrat Prime Minister Sanna Marin, is an important political force in Finland with widespread support in rural areas. The party has not previously advocated joining the bloc, traditionally leaning toward fostering a trade relationship with Russia instead.
The party’s top leadership unanimously approved a proposal made by party leader, Finance Minister Annika Saarikko, to take any security-policy decisions deemed necessary, including an application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
Johnson on Saturday laid out fresh assistance of 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems in advance of what’s likely to be a crucial battle in Ukraine’s east over the coming weeks.
That’s on top of $130 million in high-grade military equipment announced on Friday, including Starstreak antiaircraft missiles, 800 antitank missiles and high-tech munitions for precision strikes.
The U.K., at the request of Kyiv, has liberalized tariffs on most imports from Ukraine as part of a commitment to economic stability, Johnson’s office said in a statement. The U.K. will also guarantee another $500 million in World Bank lending to Ukraine, and has pledged to help Ukraine with demining when hostilities end.
Johnson’s visit comes after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Kyiv and Bucha on Friday with other senior EU officials. Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger was also part of that group; Austria’s chancellor visited Kyiv on Saturday. should the government want to take that step. Her proposal had been backed by Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen, among others.
“Finland’s security environment changed in the early hours of Feb. 24 as Russia launched its attack” on Ukraine, Saarikko said in a speech distributed by email on Saturday. “Two cornerstones of our security — a rule-based international order and a functioning relationship with Russia — crumbled beneath our feet.”
Among Finland’s biggest parties, the opposition National Coalition has been a NATO proponent for years, while the Social Democrats are re-evaluating their stance of shunning the idea of membership. The antiimmigration Finns Party, also in the opposition, became supporters of NATO entry following Russia’s attack.