Ukraine War: 10 Humanitarian Corridors Opened for Evacuation after 52 Evacuees Killed in Railway Station Rocket Attack

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, April 9: A day after 52 evacuees were killed in a rocket attack on a railway station in Eastern Ukraine’s Kramatorsk, 10 humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from Ukraine’s besieged regions have been agreed for Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. The planned corridors include one for people evacuating by private transport from the city of Mariupol, Vereshchuk said.

More evacuations are needed from the Luhansk region in Ukraine as shelling has increased in recent days and more Russian forces have been arriving, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Saturday. He said some 30% of people still remain in settlements across the region and have been asked to evacuate. “They (Russia) are amassing forces for an offensive and we see the number of shelling has increased,” Gaidai told the public television broadcaster.

Ukraine’s railway operator says operations are halted at the train station in Kramatorsk, which was damaged in a missile strike Friday, but evacuations of civilians will continue through other stations in eastern Ukraine. The company said Saturday that evacuations will continue from the stations in Slovyansk and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region and Novozolotarivka in the Luhansk region. The statement on the messaging app Telegram said “the railways do not stop the task of taking everyone to safety.”

Russian forces have destroyed an ammunition depot at the Myrhorod Air Base in central Ukraine on Saturday, a Russian Defence Ministry said. A Ukrainian air force MiG-29 fighter and a Mi-8 helicopter were also destroyed in the attack on the base in the Poltava region, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

Russia continues to hit Ukrainian non-combatants, such as the civilians killed in Friday’s rocket strike on Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine, British military intelligence said on Saturday. “Russian operations continue to focus on the Donbas region, Mariupol and Mykolaiv, supported by continued cruise missile launches into Ukraine by Russian naval forces,” the Ministry of Defence said, adding that Russia’s ambitions to establish a land corridor between Crimea and the Donbas continue to be thwarted by Ukrainian resistance.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a “firm global response” after the Kramatorsk tragedy in which the death toll went up to 52 civilians who had gathered to flee a feared Russian offensive. “This is another Russian war crime for which everyone involved will be held accountable,” Zelensky said in a video message, referring to Friday’s missile strike, whose victims included five children.

“World powers have already condemned Russia’s attack on Kramatorsk. We expect a firm global response to this war crime,” he continued. At least 52 people including five children were killed, the regional government said, while Zelensky reported 300 wounded, saying the strike showed “evil with no limits.”

Photos from the station in Kramatorsk showed the dead covered with tarps, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children,” which in Russian implied that children were being avenged by the strike, though the exact reason remained unclear. About 4,000 civilians had been in and around the station, heeding calls to leave before fighting intensifies in the Donbas region, the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said.

“Like the massacre in Bucha, like many other Russian war crimes, the missile strike on Kramatorsk must be one of the charges at the tribunal, which is bound to happen,” Zelensky said in his latest late-night address. “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.” Zelensky once again called for the West to supply more weapons to Ukraine and for greater sanctions to be imposed on Russia.

Britain’s defence ministry on Saturday said Russian forces were targeting civilians. The Russian offensive was focused on the eastern Donbas region, the British ministry said in a daily briefing. It expects air attacks to increase in southern and eastern Ukraine in the coming days as Russia tries to build a land bridge between Crimea and Donbas.

A curfew was imposed in Ukraine’s southern city of Odessa from Saturday evening until Monday evening following the missile strike on the train station in Kramatorsk.

The U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged another 100 million pounds ($130 million) in high grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wants to help Ukraine defend itself. The European Union nations also agreed to ban Russian coal in the first sanctions on the vital energy industry.

The US would ideally want India to “move away” from its long-standing history of non-alignment G77 partnership with Russia, the Biden administration has told lawmakers. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a Congressional hearing early this week that America shares a very critical relationship with India. “They are the largest democracy in the world. We have a strong defence relationship with them. They are part of the Quad, with Australia and Japan, and we are moving forward on many achievements that are critical to Indo-Pacific prosperity and security,” she said.

A day after Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council amid its invasion of Ukraine, the White House on Friday said it did not anticipate the same for Moscow in the Security Council where it is a veto-wielding Permanent Member. “I know a question has been asked about whether Russia should be kicked out of being a permanent member. We don’t anticipate that happening,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news briefing.

“But obviously, the step taken yesterday to suspend Russia from the UNHRC is an indication of the global response and horror at the atrocities we have seen happen on the ground in Ukraine. But beyond that, I don’t have any other predictions of reforms,” she said.

Russia’s justice ministry on Friday announced that it had revoked the registration of 15 foreign organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The organisations “were excluded due to the discovery of violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said in a statement.