At the same time, Russia has cut off the railway with airstrikes, thus preventing the passage of refugee trains.
A devastating missile strike has taken place at Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine. Kramatorsk is under the control of the Ukrainian army, but close to the front line.
The train station was full of civilians trying to escape the war. The mayor of the city Oleksander Honcharenkon according to the station, there were up to 4,000 people waiting to board the train.
The missiles hit the crowd. So far, 39 people are known to have died. Four of them were children. There are about a hundred injured.
The images transmitted from the station show a lot of bodies among the stacks of suitcases.
The Ukrainian army emphasizes that its troops were not close to the station, but the station was a completely civilian target.
– Because they have [venäläisillä] there is no strength or courage to face us on the battlefield, they are destroying the civilian population, the President of Ukraine told the Finnish Parliament via video link Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
– There are no limits to this evil. If it is not punished, it will never stop, he continued.
Russia has denied making the attack. According to the Russian army, the images transmitted from the station show the remains of a Tochka-U-type ballistic missile. The military is no longer using this type of missile, it says. The veracity of this claim cannot be confirmed.
Russia has also today damaged the railway used by evacuation trains in eastern Ukraine. Due to the free strike, three evacuated trains had to stop. The governor of the Donetsk region of Ukraine estimates that Russia is systematically seeking to prevent the evacuation of civilians.