Ukrainian state railway officials say 50 people were killed including five children and at least 87 were wounded Friday in a Russian rocket attack on a
Ukrainian state railway officials say 50 people were killed, including five children, and at least 87 were wounded Friday in a Russian rocket attack on a railway station in east Ukraine that was being used to evacuate civilians. Two rockets are said to have struck the station in Kramatorsk. Reuters reports that the governor of the Donetsk region said thousands of people were at the station trying to leave for safer areas as the region readies for a major Russian offensive. Ukrainian soldiers clear out bodies after a rocket attack killed at least 35 people on April 8, 2022 at a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that was being used for civilian evacuations. Also on Friday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with Ukraine’s minister of defense, Oleksii Reznikov, to discuss « the needs of the Ukrainian military to defend its country, » VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin reported. Austin also praised Slovakia’s Friday announcement that it will send S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine, calling the system « a critical defensive capability. » He added that the U.S. « ‘will continue to coordinate with our allies and partners to support the needs of the Ukrainian military and people.’ Russia’s defense ministry rejected the reports that Russia was responsible for the attack on the train station in Kramatorsk, describing them as a « provocation. » The Russian ministry issued a statement claiming the missiles used in the strike, Tochka-U, are used only by Ukraine’s armed forces and that Russian troops had not made any strikes against Kramatorsk.