Russian attack on Ukraine railway kills 25 civilians

KYIV • Russia's Defence Ministry said yesterday that its forces had struck a railway station in eastern Ukraine, confirming an attack which Kyiv said also hit a residential area and killed 25 civilians as the nation marked its Independence Day.

In its daily briefing, the Russian ministry said an Iskander missile had hit a military train on Wednesday at the station of Chaplyne that had been set to deliver arms to Ukrainian forces on the front line in the eastern Donbas region.

"As a result of a direct hit by an Iskander missile on a military train at the Chaplyne railway station in the Dnipropetrovsk region, more than 200 servicemen of the reserve of Ukraine's Armed Forces and 10 units of military equipment were destroyed," the ministry said.

Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said 21 people were killed when the strike hit the railway station and set five train carriages ablaze, while a boy died when a missile hit his home in the vicinity.

The death toll rose to 25 yesterday after three more bodies were retrieved from the rubble, he said.

The European Union has condemned the "heinous" attack on civilians.

The Chaplyne attack and artillery shelling of front-line towns, including Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Nikopol and Dnipro, followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's warnings of Russian provocations ahead of Wednesday's 31st anniversary of Ukraine's declaration of independence from Moscow-dominated Soviet rule.

Wednesday also marked six months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, starting Europe's most devastating conflict since World War II.

Fighting in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - Europe's biggest - in eastern Ukraine has emerged as a major source of concern over the past weeks, with Moscow and Kyiv trading accusations over the risk of a disaster by shelling the plant.

The United Nations has called for the area to be demilitarised and its nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is seeking to gain access.

The agency's chief Rafael Grossi yesterday told a French broadcaster that the IAEA was "very, very close" to being able to travel to the plant, captured by Russian forces in March but still run by Ukrainian technicians.

Safety systems at the Zaporizhzhia plant were activated yesterday, the RIA Novosti news agency reported, after power cuts were reported across swathes of Russian-controlled territory.

After Mr Zelensky told the UN Security Council about the Chaplyne attack in a video message, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter: "Russia's missile strike on a train station full of civilians in Ukraine fits a pattern of atrocities."

In its daily briefing, Moscow also said it had destroyed eight Ukrainian fighter jets in strikes at air bases in Ukraine's Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

That would be one of the heaviest losses for Ukraine's air force in recent weeks.

The Ukrainian regional authorities reported Russian missile strikes in the Khmelnytskyi area, west of Kyiv and hundreds of kilometres from front lines. No damage or casualties were reported.

Meanwhile, in the southern Kherson region that has seen some of the fiercest fighting in the past weeks, Suspilne TV public broadcaster cited local sources as saying there were explosions near the Antonivsky bridge across the Dnipro river, a major supply line for Russian troops in the area.

Ukraine's southern military command also reported missile strikes on the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River crossing, another important Russian supply line in the area.

And in a move that might support Western estimates of heavy Russian losses during the war, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree yesterday increasing the size of its armed forces to 2.04 million from 1.9 million.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE