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52 dead at the railway station in Kramatorsk. On the exploded rocket - the inscription "For children"

Hello,

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This is the Meduza mailing list, where we talk about the main events related to the war in Ukraine.

The main event of the day was the missile attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk, which, as far as is known at the time of sending this letter, killed 52 people, including five children, and injured more than a hundred people.

Kramatorsk is a city in the Donetsk region, which is under the control of Ukraine. Russia is attacking these areas (the “liberation” of Donbass was called by the Russian Defense Minister the main goal of the operation). Recently, the Ukrainian authorities called on residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions to evacuate, "because then people will be under fire."

from Kramatorsk were scheduled On April 7 and 8 , several evacuation trains to the west of the country. But on Thursday evening, the head of the Ukrainian railways (Ukrzaliznytsia), Alexander Kamyshin , said that Russia had launched an airstrike on the overpass near the Barvenkovo ​​station, due to which the evacuation trains were blocked (the next morning, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on the destruction of weapons and military equipment at this station). During the night, Kamyshin reported that the trains "were safely out of the blockade".

Judging by the video , filmed by journalist Alexei Merkulov, on the morning of April 8, the station in Kramatorsk was filled with people. At 10:44 a.m., the head of Ukrzaliznytsia reported that two missiles had hit the Kramatorsk railway station. In the square in front of the station, a part of one of them fell - because of this, it became clear that the blow was delivered by a Tochka-U missile. On its body was written "For the children." The Ukrainian authorities blamed Russia for the strike, and the Russian authorities blamed Ukraine.

The main argument of Russia, appearing in most official statements , is that Ukraine has Tochka-U missiles in service, while Russia has replaced them with Iskanders and does not use them. this The Conflict Intelligence Team refutes - the movements of Tochka-U complexes with the V sign have already been recorded during the war in Ukraine.

The second argument, expressed by both pro-Kremlin bloggers and the Russian Ministry of Defense, is the location of the missile unit that fell in front of the station. It “looks” to the northeast, which allows us to conclude that the missile was launched from the southwest, and these areas are under the control of Ukraine. However, the researchers question the legitimacy of such an analysis for Tochka-U, pointing out that its rocket part separates from the head part at a height of two kilometers and falls freely, as a result of which it can deviate. As an example, the case described in this article is given , when the Tochka-U missile unit, launched from north to south, turned out to be west of the affected area.

The arguments of the Ukrainian side (apart from the obvious arguments that Ukrainian citizens were killed as a result of the strike and the evacuation initiated by Ukraine was disrupted) relate to publications in pro-Kremlin telegram channels that preceded the strike.

Firstly, in one of the channels there were warnings to the residents of Kramatorsk and neighboring Slavyansk not to be evacuated by rail. Further, shortly before the strike, a video of the launch of two rockets was published - allegedly from the Shakhtyorsk region, which is controlled by separatists from the DPR. Finally, the first reports in some pro-Russian blogs about the explosion in Kramatorsk described it not as an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on civilians, but as an attack by the Russian side on the forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In addition, according to the Conflict Intelligence Team, the Russian Defense Ministry has already reported on attacks on railway stations in the Kramatorsk region.

On the evening of March 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that "like the massacres in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile attack on Kramatorsk should be one of the charges at the tribunal, which will definitely happen."

No war. Your Medusa