Nfter a Russian rocket attack on a train station in eastern Ukraine that killed at least 52, the authorities are reinforcing their warning of a major Russian offensive in the region.
Note: This article contains photos showing massive physical violence. They are used for documentation.
“They are massing troops for an offensive and the shelling has increased over the past few days,” Luhansk Governor Serhiy Hajday said in a TV address on Saturday. He again called on the civilian population to leave the region. About 30 percent of the residents in towns and villages still stayed in Luhansk up, although the evacuation had already been called.
Also according to a senior US Defense Department official, the Russian army is pulling thousands of additional soldiers near the border with the Ukrainian city Kharkiv together. The number of tactical battalions near the Russian city of Belgorod has increased from 30 to 40 now, a senior official said on Friday. He did not give an exact number of the additional troops, but such battalions typically consist of around 600 to 1,000 soldiers.
Source: Infographic WORLD
The ministry’s senior official said there were indications that the Russians were hoping to mobilize “more than 60,000 troops”. Because of the conflict in the areas near the Russian border, which has been going on for years, both warring parties are familiar with the geography of the Donbass and are networked there. Very intense fighting is therefore to be expected in the region, the official warned. “It could get very gory and very ugly,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that Russian forces are trying to rebuild their units after losses in northern Ukraine with new material and soldiers on the Donbass border. There were also reports that the units that were now to be deployed in the east were to be reinforced by mobilizing “tens of thousands of reservists”.
Meanwhile, attacks in the Donbass continue: the Russian troops concentrated on the places Ruby Ne, niche, Popasna and Novobakhmutivka to take over and take full control of the city Mariupol The Unian agency reported on Saturday morning, citing the report on the military situation of the Ukrainian general staff. According to Governor Serhiy Hajdaj, a storage facility with nitric acid near Rubishne was also damaged in the fighting.
According to the government, ten humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians are to be opened in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. In this way, residents should visit a number of cities in the regions Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia can leave, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. People from Mariupol, Enerhodar, tokmak, Berdyansk and Melitopol should be evacuated to Zaporizhia. residents out Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Girske and Ruby Ne should be allowed to travel to Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
Kramatorsk station hit by short-distance rate
The attack on the railway station Kramatorsk rated Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyj as another war crime. In one of his daily Video message from Friday evening he called for a global response. Imports of Russian energy would have to be stopped and all Russian banks cut off from the global financial system. “Any delay in the delivery of arms to Ukraine, any refusal can only mean that the politicians concerned want to help the Russian leadership more than us.”
Men carry a body of a victim of the missile attack on Kramatorsk railway station to a van
Source: AP/Andriy Andriyenko
The train station was hit by a Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. They contained cluster munitions. Cluster munitions, also known as cluster munitions, are not used in a targeted manner. It contains many smaller bombs and thus unfolds a very large radius of action. It is particularly dangerous because no distinction is made between civilian and military targets.
Cluster munitions are banned under a 2008 convention. Russia has not signed this convention and denies that such weapons are used in Ukraine, as well as the attack on the train station.
Remains of the fired rocket in Kramatorsk
Credit: AFP/ANATOLII STEPANOV
A blood-smeared stuffed animal horse at the train station
Source: AP/Andriy Andriyenko
A photo that President Zelenskyy shared on his Telegram channel from the site of the attack
Source: AP
The attack sparked global outrage. US President Joe Biden spoke of a “terrible atrocity”, Commission President Urusla von der Leyen of a “despicable attack”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was also shocked. “The killings of civilians are war crimes and responsibility for these crimes rests with the Russian President,” he said during a visit to London.
Kyiv: More than 6,500 people brought to safety
Meanwhile, more than 6,500 people have been able to leave embattled Ukrainian areas. This was announced by the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister on Friday evening in a video message published on Facebook. More than 1600 people came from the besieged port city Mariupolmore than 3500 are residents of the area Zaporizhia. Around 1,500 other people are from the area Luhansk can evacuate.
A resident of Borodianka, north of Kyiv, is waiting for his son’s body in the destruction
Credit: AFP/RONALDO SCHEMIDT
Destruction in Andriivka, near Kyiv
Source: Getty Images/Alexey Furman
In the southern Ukrainian city Melitopol Russian units have been holding eight evacuation buses for 24 hours, Wereshchuk said. Negotiations are underway to return the buses to evacuate people as planned.
The evacuations were also carried out on Saturday with buses and vans Kramatorsk continued.
Russia reports destruction of eight Tochka submarine launch pads
Russia says it has destroyed eight Totschka-U missile launch pads since the invasion of Ukraine. This was announced by the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, on Friday evening. At the same time, around 90 percent of the missiles in the arsenals were destroyed, it said.
Konashenkov added that he would like to emphasize that the Ukrainian armed forces “still have a significant arsenal of Tochka-U missiles”. Before the war began, Kyiv had 20 launch sites, each with two launch pads for short-range missiles.
Source: infographic WELT/Florence Bouchain
In addition to the attack on the train station, Konashenkov reported the destruction of a large depot of missile and artillery weapons by the Ukrainian army near the port city of Odessa by high-precision missiles fired from the air. Equipment belonging to the Ukrainian Air Force was also said to have been destroyed at the Kanatovo military airfield near the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi.
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