Residents of eastern Ukraine were met Saturday by the sound of air raid sirens The regions governor is warning civilians to evacuate immediately as
Residents of eastern Ukraine were met Saturday by the sound of air raid sirens. The region’s governor is warning civilians to evacuate immediately as Russia increases shelling in the area. Governor Serhiy Gaidai told a public television station that Russia is „amassing an offensive“ on the one-third of the population that remains in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Military analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin is redirecting the invasion to eastern Ukraine, after the military met stiff resistance and withdrew from areas around Kyiv in the north. The British Defense Ministry expects increased shelling to continue in the south and east as Russia attempts to create a route between Crimea and the Donbas region. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Appeal for ‚firm global response‘ At least 52 people, including five children, died Friday, with scores more injured while trying to evacuate as two missiles hit a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike a deliberate attack on civilians and said he expects a „firm global response“ to what he labeled „a war crime.“ ‚Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, [Russian troops] are cynically destroying the civilian population,‘ Zelenskyy said on social media. In this photo published on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram channel, blood stains are seen among bags and a baby carriage on a platform after a missile struck a railway station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 8, 2022. Russia denied carrying out the missile strike and in turn blamed Ukraine, saying it does not use the short-range kind of missile – the Tochka-U – that hit the station. However, the website Defence Blog reported on March 31 that a convoy of Russian military vehicles were carrying the Tochka-U missiles – known in the West as the SS-21 or Scarab-B – had been photographed as part of Russia’s invasion force into Ukraine.
