Ukraine is ready for a tough battle with Russian forces amassing in the east of the country, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday, a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station in Kramatorsk, where thousands clamoured to leave before an expected Russian onslaught.
Air-raid sirens sounded in cities across eastern Ukraine, which has become the focus of Russian military action following a withdrawal from areas close to the capital, Kyiv.
Russia denied responsibility and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to try to turn blame for civilian casualties on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to reinforce the argument.
Western experts and Ukrainian authorities maintained that Russia launched the weapon. Remnants of the rocket had the words “For the children” in Russian painted on it.
With trains not running out of Kramatorsk on Saturday, panicked residents boarded buses or looked for other ways to get out, 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.
On Saturday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Zelenkyy met in Kyiv in what Johnson’s office said was “a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The unannounced visit that came a day after Johnson pledged another 100 million pounds ($130 million) in high grade military equipment to Ukraine. The two leaders meeting Saturday discussed the “U.K.’s long term support to Ukraine’’.
On Friday, workers unearthed the bodies of 67 people from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
A total of 176 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, while 324 more have been wounded, the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.
Ukrainian archbishop visits Bucha
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, visited several cities recently liberated from Russian occupation, including Bucha, where war crimes are believed to have been committed against civilians.
On April 7, Shevchuk also made stops in Gostomel and Irpin, according to the website for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Standing before the mass grave in Bucha, Shevchuk said, “It’s very difficult to speak. Their blood calls from here, from this land, to heaven.”
Shevchuk said that he is also praying for justice, because “if this sin is not condemned, if this crime is not exposed, it can be repeated.”
Pope Francis Wednesday in his weekly general audience denounced the massacre in Bucha and said the United Nations and other international organizations have proven “incapable,” consumed by private interests rather than the pursuit of justice.
-AP/Reuters/Cruxnow