Live Updates: At Least 50 Killed in Strike on Train Station, Ukraine Says, as Thousands Flee From East
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04/08/world/ukraine-russia-war-news
A missile strike at a crowded train station in eastern Ukraine on Friday killed at least 50 people and wounded nearly 100, according to Ukrainian officials, who blamed Russia for hitting a major evacuation point for the many trying to flee before an expected stepped-up offensive.
Platforms at the station, in the city of Kramatorsk, had been jammed in recent days with people rushing to safer areas in Ukraine’s west, and officials said there were about 4,000 people at the railway station at the time of the strike. Photos provided by Ukrainian officials of the aftermath showed people splayed on the ground, surrounded by scattered luggage and debris. In a video from the scene, a woman screams, “There are so many corpses, there are children, there are just children!”
As the war enters its seventh week, the strike appeared to continue a Russian approach of targeting civilians and infrastructure that has devastated cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol, intended to demoralize populations. Russia’s Defense Ministry called the reports that Russia was responsible for an attack in Kramatorsk a “provocation.”
Officials have warned that the window is closing for civilians to flee as Russian troops withdrawing from the north regroup for a major push in the east. Ukraine’s railway service said after Friday’s attack that evacuations from the east of the country would continue from nearby Sloviansk. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has called on the West to go even further to counter Russia, accused Moscow of “cynically destroying the civilian population.”
Russia is already facing new sanctions imposed by Western countries in response to mounting evidence of atrocities in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv. On Friday, the European Union formally approved a ban on coal imports, as well as sanctions against high-profile Russians and two daughters of President Vladimir V. Putin. It is the bloc’s fifth round of sanctions since the war began.
In other developments:
Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine warned in a speech late Thursday that the scale of devastation in the southeastern city of Mariupol, which has been bombarded for weeks, was likely to be even greater. “There, on almost every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the withdrawal of Russian troops,” he said in his nightly address.
Mr. Zelensky warned that the Russian forces in Mariupol could try to stage scenes to make it look as though Ukrainian forces had killed civilians. The situation in the southern city has grown dire, local officials say, though they denied Russian-backed forces’ claims of having captured central Mariupol.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in an interview with Sky News on Thursday that Russia had suffered “significant losses of troops,” which he called “a huge tragedy.” It was a stark official acknowledgment of the scale of Russian losses.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Slovakia’s prime minister said that they would visit Kyiv on Friday.
Microsoft said it had obtained a court order in the United States to disrupt the activities of a group connected to the intelligence arm of the Russian military. Microsoft said the cyberespionage group had been targeting Ukrainian institutions, including media organizations, and think tanks in the U.S. and Europe.
Jane Arraf
April 8, 2022, 10:07 a.m. ET5 minutes ago
5 minutes ago
Jane ArrafReporting from Lviv, Ukraine
The head of the Donetsk Military Administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, says that 50 people are dead in train station attack, including 12 who died in the hospital. Another 98 were wounded, including 16 children, he says.
April 8, 2022, 9:41 a.m. ET31 minutes ago
31 minutes ago
Rick Gladstone
The United Nations Children’s Fund, which has been delivering tons of emergency supplies to Kramatorsk, expressed shock over the deadly attack on the train station. “We do not know yet how many children were killed and injured in the attack, but we fear the worst,” said Murat Sahin, UNICEF’s Ukraine representative.
Chris Stanford
April 8, 2022, 9:22 a.m. ET50 minutes ago
50 minutes ago
Chris StanfordReporting from London
Driven by disruptions caused by the war, world food prices rose sharply last month to their highest levels ever, the United Nations reported on Friday. Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers of the world’s wheat and other grains.
Eshe Nelson
April 8, 2022, 8:53 a.m. ET1 hour ago
1 hour ago
Eshe Nelson
Russia cuts interest rates to 17 percent as ruble recovers.
Russia’s central bank said on Friday that it would cut its interest rate to 17 percent, from 20 percent, beginning Monday amid signs that financial stability risks in the country were easing thanks to capital controls.
The unscheduled rate change came after the ruble had regained most of its losses since Russia invaded Ukraine. The central bank said inflation would continue to rise but that recent data had pointed to a slowdown in price increases, in part because of the ruble’s gain. The annual rate of inflation neared 17 percent at the start of April, but weekly the inflation rate slowed to just under 1 percent.
At 17 percent, Russia’s interest rate remains significantly higher than normal. The rate was more than doubled in late February — to 20 percent from 9.5 percent — after the ruble plunged following the invasion of Ukraine and the central bank took emergency measures to halt the outflow of money from the country. While the rate will be brought down slightly, the central bank said on Friday that “external conditions” for the Russian economy were still “challenging” and constraining activity.
