Residents and officials gathered in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on April 8 to commemorate the dozens of lives lost one year ago when a Russian missile hit the central rail station where thousands of people had gathered to board trains to evacuate the area.
"The horror that swept over the Kramatorsk railway station that day claimed the lives of 61 people, and more than a hundred were injured," the city council said in a statement.
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“They fled the war, sought salvation in lands far from home, but a Russian missile cut short their lives, crippled the fate of entire families.”
“Last year's events are indisputable evidence of Russia's criminal acts on the territory of Ukraine. The missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station is one of the bloodiest pages of the criminal case, which, we are sure, will be considered in the court of The Hague. The perpetrators must be punished,” it added.
Russia denies that it targets civilian sites despite widespread evidence of such acts since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In February 2023, Human Rights Watch, in a joint investigation with the SITU research group, said strong evidence suggested that the missile strike on the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine was a "clear war crime" by Russia.
The report said the ballistic missile that targeted the train station was loaded with banned cluster munitions that dispersed dozens of small bombs.
"The evidence strongly indicates that the missile that killed and wounded civilians at the Kramatorsk train station was launched from Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. The attack was a violation of the laws of war and a clear war crime," the report said.
On the first anniversary, a moment of silence was declared at the rail station as residents placed flowers at a small memorial at the site.
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'No One Can Replace Their Mom': Ukrainian Sisters Struggle With Loss After Kramatorsk Air Strike
Kramatorsk, which had a prewar population of about 157,000, is the administrative center of the Kramatorsk region in the Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine.
On March 31, Ukraine also marked one year since Russian forces withdrew from Bucha, leaving behind hundreds of bodies of murdered civilians on the streets of the commuter town near the capital in what Kyiv said was a massacre and a Russian war crime.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy presided over an official outdoor ceremony in Bucha that was also attended by Moldovan President Maia Sandu and the prime ministers of EU and NATO members Croatia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.