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One moment, they were packed onto the platforms at the Kramatorsk train station, hundreds of women, children and old people, heeding the pleas of Ukrainian officials imploring them to flee ahead of a feared Russian onslaught.

The next moment, death rained from the air.

At least 50 people were killed and many more wounded in a missile assault on Friday morning that left bodies and luggage scattered on the ground and turned the Kramatorsk station into the site of another atrocity in the six-week-old war.

There are just children! one woman cried in a video from the aftermath.

The missile struck as officials in Kramatorsk and other cities in eastern Ukraine had been warning civilians to leave before Russian forces mount what is expected to be a major push into the region, where their troops have been regrouping after withdrawing from areas around Kyiv, the capital.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Russia had hit the station with what he identified as a Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile as thousands of peaceful Ukrainians were waiting to be evacuated.

Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population, Mr. Zelensky said. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop.

Russian officials, denying responsibility, said a Ukrainian battalion had fired the missile in what they called a provocation. The Russian Defense Ministry said that Tochka-U missiles are only used by the Ukrainian armed forces and that Russian troops had not made any strikes against Kramatorsk on Friday.

A senior Pentagon official said the United States believed Russian forces had fired the missile. They originally claimed a successful strike and then only retracted it when there were reports of civilian casualties, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential intelligence assessment.

The train station was hit as a top European Union delegation was visiting Mr. Zelenskys government, and the images of yet another mass killing provoked new Western outrage.

Whether one or more missiles struck the station was not immediately clear, and there was no way to independently verify the origin of the attack. Several parked cars were also hit, catching fire and turning into charred hulks. The waiting area was strewn with bodies and belongings.

After the strike, the Ukrainian police inspected the remains of a large rocket next to the train station with the words for our children written on it in Russian. It was unclear who had written the message and where the rocket had come from.

The mayor of Kramatorsk, Oleksandr Honcharenko, said 4,000 people had been at the station when it was attacked, the vast majority of them women, children and elderly people. At least two children were among the dead, he said.

The head of the military administration in the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said 50 people had been killed, including 12 who died in the hospital. Another 98 were wounded, including 16 children, he said.

After the attack, Kramatorsk officials said they were trying to find cars and buses to evacuate civilians to western areas presumed to be less vulnerable to Russian attacks.

Ukraines railway service said that evacuations would proceed from nearby Sloviansk, where shelters and hospitals have been stocked with food and medicine in anticipation of an imminent Russian offensive.

Western countries, which have been shipping arms to Ukraine and tightening sanctions on Russia to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for the invasion, saw the Kramatorsk slaughter as new justification to intensify their efforts.

The attack on a Ukrainian train station is yet another horrific atrocity committed by Russia, striking civilians who were trying to evacuate and reach safety, President Biden said on Twitter. He vowed to send more weapons to Ukraine and to work with allies to investigate the attack as we document Russias actions and hold them accountable.

President Emmanuel Macron of France called the strike abominable.

Ukrainian civilians are fleeing to escape the worst, he wrote on Twitter. Their weapons? Strollers, stuffed animals, luggage.

The station was hit as the Slovak president, Eduard Heger, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, were traveling to Kyiv in a show of support for Mr. Zelensky and his countrys bid for European Union membership.

Mr. Heger announced that Slovakia had given Ukraine an S-300 air defense system to help defend against Russian missiles and airstrikes.

To make the transfer possible, the Pentagon said it would reposition one Patriot missile system, operated by U.S. service members, to Slovakia. It was the latest buildup in arms and troops along NATOs eastern flank, as the alliance seeks to deter any Russian incursion.

Now is no time for complacency, Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing the Patriot repositioning. As the Russian military repositions for the next phase of this war, I have directed my administration to continue to spare no effort to identify and provide to the Ukrainian military the advanced weapons capabilities it needs to defend its country.

The attack on the railway station came after Russian forces had spent weeks shelling schools, hospitals and apartment buildings in an apparent attempt to pound Ukraine into submission by indiscriminately targeting civilian infrastructure, ignoring Geneva Convention protections that can make such actions war crimes.

Last month, an estimated 300 people were killed in an attack on a theater where hundreds had been sheltering in the battered port of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. In recent days, growing evidence has pointed to atrocities in the devastated suburbs of Kyiv, where Ukrainian troops found bodies bound and shot in the head after Russian forces had retreated.

Ms. von der Leyen visited one of those suburbs, Bucha, on Friday before meeting with Mr. Zelensky.

It was important to start my visit in Bucha, she wrote on Twitter. Because in Bucha our humanity was shattered.

Russia has said its troops have been falsely accused and that the evidence against them is fake.

The repercussions of the fighting are spreading far beyond Europe. The United Nations reported on Friday that world food prices rose sharply last month to their highest levels ever, as the invasion sent shock waves through global grain and vegetable oil markets. Russia and Ukraine are important suppliers of the worlds wheat and other grains.

The report of rising prices came as the British government said Russia was heading for its deepest recession since the collapse of the Soviet Union, estimating that the economy could shrink by as much as 15 percent this year.

On Friday, the European Union formally approved its fifth round of sanctions against Moscow, which included a ban on Russian coal and restrictions on Russian banks, oligarchs and Kremlin officials. The coal ban, which will cost Russia about $8.7 billion in annual revenue, takes effect immediately for new contracts. At Germanys insistence, however, existing contracts were given four months to wind down, softening the blow to Russia and Germany alike.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in London on Friday, applauded what Mr. Johnson called the seismic decision by Germany to turn away from Russian fuel. Britain has pushed for a total ban on Russian energy, a move that Germany, which heats half its homes with Russian gas, has resisted.

Mr. Johnson acknowledged the obstacles to transforming Germanys energy system overnight, but said we know that Russias war in Ukraine will not end overnight. Mr. Scholz said Mr. Putin had tried to divide European powers, but he will continue to experience our unity.

On Friday, Russia retaliated for some of the punishments from the West, declaring 45 Polish Embassy and Consulate staff persona non grata, and ordering them to leave Russia. Poland had expelled the same number of Russian diplomats.

Russias Justice Ministry also said it had revoked the registration of several prominent human rights groups in the country, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which have accused Russian troops of committing war crimes in Ukraine. The ministry accused the groups of violating an unspecified Russian law. The decision means the organizations are no longer allowed to operate in Russia.

Human Rights Watch said that forcing its office to close would not change its determination to call out Russias turn to authoritarianism. The group said it had been monitoring abuses in Russia since the Soviet era.

We found ways of documenting human rights abuses then, and we will do so in the future, it said.

Megan Specia reported from Krakow, Poland, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jane Arraf from Lviv, Ukraine, Aurelien Breeden from Paris, Ivan Nechepurenko from Istanbul, Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels, Michael D. Shear and Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Mark Landler and Chris Stanford from London.

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What Happened on Day 44 of Russias Invasion of Ukraine - The New York Times

On April 12, 1861, rebel artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, beginning the U.S. Civil War. The war eventually became a catastrophe for the South, which lost more than a fifth of its young men. But why did the secessionists believe they could pull it off?

One reason was they believed themselves to be in possession of a powerful economic weapon. The economy of Britain, the worlds leading power at the time, was deeply dependent on Southern cotton, and they thought a cutoff of that supply would force Britain to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. Indeed, the Civil War initially created a cotton famine that threw thousands of Britons out of work.

In the end, of course, Britain stayed neutral in part because British workers saw the Civil War as a moral crusade against slavery and rallied to the Union cause despite their suffering.

Why recount this old history? Because it has obvious relevance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seems fairly clear that Vladimir Putin saw the reliance of Europe, and Germany in particular, on Russian natural gas the same way slave owners saw Britains reliance on King Cotton: a form of economic dependence that would coerce these nations into enabling his military ambitions.

And he wasnt entirely wrong. Last week I castigated Germany for its unwillingness to make economic sacrifices for the sake of Ukraines freedom. But lets not forget that Germanys response to Ukraines pleas for military aid on the eve of war was also pathetic. Britain and the United States rushed to provide lethal weapons, including hundreds of the anti-tank missiles that were so crucial in repelling Russias attack on Kyiv. Germany offered and dragged its feet on delivering 5,000 helmets.

And its not hard to imagine that if, say, Donald Trump were still president here, Putins bet that international trade would be a force for coercion, not peace, would have been vindicated.

If you think Im trying to help shame Germany into becoming a better defender of democracy, youre right. But Im also trying to make a broader point about the relationship between globalization and war, which isnt as simple as many people have assumed.

There has been a longstanding belief among Western elites that commerce is good for peace, and vice versa. Americas long push for trade liberalization, which began even before World War II, was always in part a political project: Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelts secretary of state, firmly believed that lower tariffs and increased international trade would help lay the foundations for peace.

The European Union, too, was both an economic and a political project. Its origins lie in the European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1952 with the explicit goal of making French and German industry so interdependent that there could never be another European war.

And the roots of Germanys current vulnerability go back to the 1960s, when the West German government began pursuing Ostpolitik eastern policy seeking to normalize relations, including economic relations, with the Soviet Union, in the hope that growing integration with the West would strengthen civil society and move the East toward democracy. Russian gas began flowing to Germany in 1973.

So does trade promote peace and freedom? Surely it does in some cases. In other cases, however, authoritarian rulers more concerned with power than with prosperity may see economic integration with other nations as a license for bad behavior, assuming that democracies with a strong financial stake in their regimes will turn a blind eye to their abuses of power.

Im not talking just about Russia. The European Union has stood by for years while Viktor Orban of Hungary has systematically dismantled liberal democracy. How much of this weakness can be explained by the large Hungarian investments that European, and especially German, companies have made while pursuing cost-cutting outsourcing?

And then theres the really big question: China. Does Xi Jinping see Chinas close integration with the world economy as a reason to avoid adventurous policies such as invading Taiwan or as a reason to expect a weak-kneed Western response? Nobody knows.

Now, Im not suggesting a return to protectionism. I am suggesting that national-security concerns about trade real concerns, not farcical versions like Trumps invocation of national security to impose tariffs on Canadian aluminum need to be taken more seriously than I, among others, used to believe.

More immediately, however, law-abiding nations need to show that they wont be deterred from defending freedom. Autocrats may believe that financial exposure to their authoritarian regimes will make democracies afraid to stand up for their values. We need to prove them wrong.

And what that means in practice is both that Europe must move quickly to cut off imports of Russian oil and gas and that the West needs to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, not just to hold Putin at bay, but to win a clear-cut victory. The stakes here are much bigger than Ukraine alone.

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Opinion | Putin, Ukraine and the Illusion That Trade Brings Peace - The New York Times

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

Ukrainian helicopters have carried out a strike on a fuel storage facility in Russia's western town of Belgorod, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border, according to the local governor.

"There was a fire at the petrol depot because of an air strike carried out by two Ukrainian army helicopters, which entered Russian territory at a low altitude," Vyacheslav Gladkov says on Telegram.

The Red Cross says it is "not yet clear" that the evacuation of civilians from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol will go ahead as planned.

Ukrainian servicemen check passers-by after a bombardment in the city of Kharkiv Photo: AFP / FADEL SENNA

"We remain hopeful, we are in action moving towards Mariupol... but it's not yet clear that this will happen today," spokesman Ewan Watson says as an ICRC team of three cars and nine staff heads towards the city.

The EU's top officials have warned China's leaders at a summit not to help Russia wage war on Ukraine or sidestep Western sanctions, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen says.

"It would lead to a major reputational damage for China here in Europe," Von der Leyen said after video talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Kremlin is offering to "explain" Moscow's actions in Ukraine to French actor Gerard Depardieu after he denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin's "crazy, unacceptable excesses" and slammed the war.

Depardieu, a friend of Putin, took Russian nationality in 2013 to protest against a proposed tax hike on the rich in his homeland.

Ukrainian soldiers stand by a burnt Russian tank on the outskirts of Kyiv, on March 31, 2022 Photo: AFP / RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia is preparing "powerful strikes" in the country's east and south, including the besieged city of Mariupol.

NATO also says it is not seeing a pull-back of Russian forces in Ukraine and expects "additional offensive actions".

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola says she is on her way to Ukraine, making her the first EU leader to visit the war-torn country.

The Maltese MEP, who was elected in January, tweets "On my way to Kyiv" alongside a Ukrainian flag, but gives no further details.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov praises India's refusal to condemn the Ukraine invasion, stressing their "friendship" and saying Moscow and New Delhi will find ways to circumvent "illegal" Western sanctions and continue to trade.

Russian forces have begun to pull out of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power site and move towards Belarus, but took an unspecified number of captive Ukrainian servicemen with them, officials in Kyiv say.

US President Joe Biden says Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin may be "isolated" and could have placed some of his advisors under "house arrest".

Putin says "unfriendly" countries, including all EU members, must set up ruble accounts to pay for gas deliveries from April, or "existing contracts would be stopped".

Ukraine football champions Dynamo Kyiv say they are planning a series of friendlies, including against PSG and Barcelona, to raise money for their war-scarred nation.

Ukraine's championship has not been resumed after the winter break due to the Russian invasion of the country which began on February 24.

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War In Ukraine: Latest Developments

But far more needs to be done to assist the places where refugees are clustered, and to help refugees find their way out of overcrowded welcome centers. Britains Homes for Ukraine program, which pays families and organizations to take in refugees, has resulted in the issuing of 2,700 visas so far, while Finland has offered spots in universities to 2,000 Ukrainians.

These ad hoc efforts are important but insufficient given the millions of people who are affected. The European Union has established a platform to match offers of help with those in need. Seven countries, including Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, have pledged to take in some 15,000 of the Ukrainians now in Moldova. But thats a small fraction of the estimated 98,000 Ukrainians in Moldova, many of whom are reluctant to leave because a language they know, Russian, is spoken there.

The European Union has also identified roughly 17 billion euros in funds for pandemic recovery and programs to promote social and economic cohesion that could be immediately spent on urgent needs, including housing, education, health care and child care. An E.U. proposal to address the current crisis would distribute more of those funds to countries hosting large numbers of refugees. Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia would receive 45 percent more funding than they would have gotten. Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Estonia member states that have received the highest number of Ukrainians in proportion to their national populations would get that increase as well.

Efforts to humanely accommodate those displaced by the war need not be confined to Europe. Canada, which is home to a large Ukrainian population, has agreed to welcome an unlimited number of people fleeing the war to stay for at least two years. Even Japan, which has long been reluctant to take in refugees, has agreed to accept Ukrainians.

President Bidens announcement that the United States would accept up to 100,000 is a good start, but the country can do more, especially when public support for welcoming Ukrainian refugees is strong. The United States has been a key player in Ukraine over the years, from encouraging Ukrainians to stand up to Russia to persuading Ukrainians to agree to the removal of nuclear weapons from their territory following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a decision that many Ukrainians deeply regret today.

As the world enters a period of greater instability, its leaders can no longer ignore the need for a coordinated and humane response to all of those fleeing war and other desperate circumstances.

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Opinion | Putin Knows What Hes Doing With Ukraines Refugees. This Is the Worlds Big Test. - The New York Times

WASHINGTON

New details have emerged about Belarusians fighting for Ukraine against Russia's invasion as part of a broader struggle to free their own country from Russian domination and the rule of Moscow-backed autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.

Speaking exclusively to VOA in a Tuesday phone interview, the deputy commander of the largest pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighting force said its numbers have almost reached the size of an average Ukrainian battalion, which he said has about 450-500 troops.

"Several thousand more have applied to join us through our online recruitment tool," said Vadim Kabanchuk of the Kastus Kalinouski battalion, named after a Belarusian revolutionary who led a regional uprising against Russian occupation in the 1860s.

The Kalinouski battalion began forming in Kyiv after Russia had begun its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The battalion uses the Telegram channel @belwarriors to share news and images of its activities. On March 9, it announced its adoption of the Kalinouski name in a video posted to the platform.

Kabanchuk said he is one of a number of the Belarusian battalion's fighters who have been active in Ukraine's defense starting in 2014. That year, Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine's Donbas region to foment a separatist uprising within its Russian-speaking community.

Belarusians have been drawn to fight for Ukraine for years in the hope that freeing it from Russian occupation would boost their own efforts to rid Belarus of Moscow's influence and end the 27-year presidency of Lukashenko, a key Russian ally.

The Kalinouski battalion swore an oath of allegiance to Belarus and Ukraine in a Telegram video posted March 25. Four days later, in another video, battalion members said they had a new status as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and held up green booklets that resembled Ukrainian military IDs.

There has been no confirmation of the Kalinouski battalion's announcement on websites run by the Ukrainian government and military. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a VOA email asking whether it could provide such a confirmation.

Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, told VOA that he believes the Kalinouski battalion's declared integration into the Ukrainian Armed Forces is credible. He described the battalion as the biggest and "perhaps best organized" of the Belarusian groups fighting for Ukraine and said it has earned a right to display Belarus' national flag and coat of arms in its operations.

"As of now, they will be fighting not only in one place, not only in defense of Kyiv, but all over Ukraine," Viacorka said.

As Russia's full-scale invasion began, Belarusian fighters of what later became the Kalinouski battalion joined the Ukrainian military's volunteer Territorial Defense Force units in Kyiv, according to deputy commander Kabanchuk. The Kyiv Independent news site had reported in January that the Territorial Defense Force units would comprise former active-duty Ukrainian military personnel and other volunteers, including civilians.

Kabanchuk said some of the Kyiv territorial defense units that his fellow Belarusian fighters joined included Ukrainian fighters with ties to the Azov regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard. The Azov regiment is known for the far-right beliefs of some of its members and has been most active in Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port besieged by Russia for weeks.

"We initially were part of Kyiv territorial defense units whose members called themselves part of the 'Azov movement,'" said Kabanchuk. "But we are not part of the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov regiment and don't want to be confused with it," he added.

Most Belarusians who volunteer to fight for Ukraine are driven not by far-right ideology but by a belief that Kyiv's struggle is part of their own fight to free Belarus from Russian imperialism, said former Belarusian Foreign Ministry official Pavel Slunkin in a phone call with VOA.

"They include bloggers, journalists, I.T. specialists, factory workers. All kinds of professions. And they want to see Belarus as a democratic state," said Slunkin, now an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Not all Belarusians who seek to join the Kalinouski battalion will make it through a multistage vetting process aimed at weeding out security threats, Kabanchuk explained. Those threats include the possibility of Lukashenko's agents trying to infiltrate the battalion, he said.

"Many of the thousands who applied will be rejected after in-person interviews at the Belarusian recruitment center in the Polish capital, Warsaw, which acts as a first-stage filtration hub for potential fighters," Kabanchuk said. "Others will be rejected as unsuitable after they arrive to the battalion bases."

Smaller groups of Belarusian fighters have been active in other parts of Ukraine in recent weeks, according to Belarusian opposition figures. In a Thursday tweet, Tsikhanouskaya said a recently formed regiment called Pahonia is training new volunteers on behalf of Ukraine's armed forces.

In a Friday statement to VOA, a spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, Norwegian-born Damien Magrou, responded to a question about Pahonia by saying Ukrainian officials are considering an initiative to integrate "suitable" Belarusian volunteers into the legion.

Kabanchuk said the Kalinouski battalion prefers not to join the international legion because his fighters have much more autonomy as a separate unit.

Viacorka, the Tsikhanouskaya adviser, said in a Thursday tweet that he hopes the Pahonia regiment will form the basis of a new professional Belarusian army in a post-Lukashenko era.

Lukashenko derided the pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighters last month, telling a government meeting that the fighters are "crazy" and motivated only by money.

As for his own troops, he has avoided sending them into Ukraine to join in Russia's invasion.

Kabanchuk said that if Lukashenko were to do that, some of the Belarusian military's forces would surrender, and others would turn against the Belarusian autocrat.

"He understands very well that sending troops into Ukraine will speed up the fall of his regime," Kabanchuk said.

See the original post here:
How Belarusian Fighters in Ukraine Evolved Into Prominent Force Against Russian Invasion - Voice of America - VOA News