Moscow denied responsibility for the missile strike in Kramatorsk that killed at least 50, but the Pentagon said Russian forces were behind it. Ukraine’s railway service said evacuations would proceed from a nearby city.
Kyiv April 9, 12:13 p.m. Moscow April 9, 12:13 p.m. Washington April 9, 5:13 a.m. Moscow denied responsibility for the missile strike in Kramatorsk that killed at least 50, but the Pentagon said Russian forces were behind it. Ukraine’s railway service said evacuations would proceed from a nearby city. Victoria Kim Residents of eastern Ukraine were coming to terms Saturday with the aftermath of a missile attack on a railway station that killed at least 50 people and injured scores of others who were caught in the line of fire while trying to flee the region at the urgent warning of local officials. Friday’s attack at the station in Kramatorsk, which killed children and left behind a gruesome scene of bodies scattered between suitcases, is the latest Russian action that should be investigated by a war-crimes tribunal, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address. “We expect a firm, global response to this war crime,” he said. “All the efforts of the world will be aimed to establish every minute: who did what, who gave orders. Where did the rocket come from, who was carrying it, who gave the order and how the strike was coordinated.” A chorus of world leaders, including President Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France, condemned the attack and called for Russia to be held to account. Mr. Zelensky said he discussed the possibility of a special tribunal with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who visited Kyiv on Friday and surveyed a mass grave in the suburban city of Bucha. Russia denied its troops were behind the attack on the train station and said a Ukrainian battalion had fired the missile on its own people, in what they said was a “provocation.” But a senior Pentagon official said the United States believed that Russian forces had fired the missile. Ukraine’s railway service said that evacuations would proceed from nearby Sloviansk, even though the attack in Kramatorsk had disrupted train service. In the days before the attack, Ukrainian authorities had urged civilians to leave parts of eastern Ukraine, as Russia regrouped to focus its war effort on separatist regions there. In other developments: Slovakia supplied Ukraine with an S-300 air defense system to help defend against Russian missiles and airstrikes, the country’s prime minister, Eduard Heger, said during a visit to Kyiv. The United States sent a U.S. Patriot missile system to Slovakia as a replacement for its own defenses to enable the transfer. In apparent disregard for safety, Russian soldiers tramped about the grounds of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with bulldozers and tanks, dug trenches and bunkers, exposing themselves to potentially harmful doses of radiation lingering beneath the surface from the 1986 nuclear disaster, the chief safety engineer of the site told The New York Times in an interview. Russia occupied the plant and surrounding areas for five weeks. Russia announced it has shuttered the local offices of more than a dozen international nonprofit organizations that have been among its harsh critics, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Both groups have said they were gathering evidence of apparent war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain announced fresh shipments to Ukraine of an antiaircraft missile system, known as Starstreak, and 800 antitank missiles. The defense minister, Ben Wallace, said Britain would also provide Ukraine with armored vehicles. Cora Engelbrecht More than 6,600 people managed to flee from besieged cities in Ukraine on Friday — a record number for the week — the country’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on her Telegram account. Victoria Kim Japan is stepping up its rhetoric and economic measures against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, furthering Moscow’s economic isolation and joining the United States and European nations in calling for investigations into accusations of war crimes. The country said on Friday that it would expel eight Russian diplomats, and announced a ban on Russian coal and restrictions on imports including timber, vodka and machinery. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida lambasted what he said were “brutal and inhumane acts” carried out by Russian forces in cities across Ukraine, including in the suburban town of Bucha near the capital, Kyiv. He accused them of having repeatedly violated international humanitarian law by attacking civilians and nuclear power plants, a sore point for Japan given its 2011 experience with nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. “We must hold Russia strictly accountable for these atrocities,” he said, calling actions by Russian troops “unforgivable war crimes.” Japan supports an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court into accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, he added, and would support an independent inquiry by the United Nations. Japan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador on Friday and cited the killings of civilians in large numbers, calling them war crimes, the ministry said in a statement. In a significant shift from past instances of Russian aggression on its neighbors, Japan acted swiftly after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February to send aid to Ukraine and impose economic penalties and sanctions on Russian individuals and entities. Japan this week added hundreds of people and organizations to its Russia sanctions and said that it would freeze the assets of two of Russia’s largest banks, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, which are also subject to U.S. sanctions. Mr. Kishida said the country would also prohibit new investment in Russia. Moves to curb energy imports from Russia could be costly for Japan, which is resource poor and heavily dependent on overseas fossil fuels for its power generation.
