Slovakia's Prime Minister Eduard Heger (C-L) stands next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel as they visit a mass grave in the town of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, on April 8, 2022.SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Here are the latest updates on the war in Ukraine:
- A rocket strike on a busy railway station in east Ukraine has killed dozens of evacuees, including at least 5 children, who were trying to flee the country; Russia has denied responsibility for the attack
- According to reports, the rocket casing found on the scene had the phrase ‘for the children’ scrawled on its side
- At least 100 have suffered serious injuries, including loss of limbs
- This video show the disturbing aftermath of the attack
- Forensic investigators began exhuming a mass grave in Bucha on Friday, wrapping in black plastic and laying out the bodies of civilians who officials say were killed while Russian troops occupied the town just northwest of Kyiv.
6:45 p.m. ET
Train station strike was war crime, Zelensky says
Politicians applaud following the address via video link of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (seen on screen) at the Finnish Parliament in Helsinki, Finland, on April 8, 2022.EMMI KORHONEN/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the missile strike on an eastern train station as another Russian war crime and said Ukraine expects a tough global response.
“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 that must be held,” he said during his nightly video address to the nation Friday.
The president told Ukrainians that great efforts would be taken “to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” so that those behind the attack would be held responsible.
Zelensky thanked the European Union for its commitment to help investigate Russian war crimes. He said he spoke with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Friday and urged the EU to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and gas.
“It is energy exports that provide the lion’s share of Russia’s income and allow the Russian leadership to believe in their impunity,” Zelensky said. “That allows them to hope that the world will ignore the war crimes committed by the Russian army.”
Zelensky also called for fully excluding all Russian banks from the global financial system and repeated his appeal for more weapons.
– The Associated Press
5:30 p.m. ET
Some Russian combat units depleted, U.S. defence official says
Deserted streets during a city-wide curfew in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 22, 2022.LYNSEY ADDARIO/The New York Times News Service
A senior U.S. defence official says the Pentagon has determined that some of the Russian combat units that retreated from the Kyiv area in recent days are so heavily damaged and depleted that their combat utility is in question.
The official described these units as “for all intents and purposes eradicated,” with only a small number of functioning troops and weapons remaining. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments, did not say how many units sustained such extensive damage.
The official said some combat units that withdrew from the Kyiv area are beginning to move toward the Russian towns of Belgorod and Valuyki for refitting and resupplying before likely deploying to the Donbas region of Ukraine. The official also said the U.S. has seen thousands of additional Russian troops added to the combat force that Moscow has been using in and around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The official says that the U.S. believes Russia has lost 15 to 20 percent of the combat power it had assembled along Ukraine’s borders before launching its invasion Feb. 24.
– The Associated Press
4:45 p.m. ET
Russia revokes registration of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch
Russia’s justice ministry said on Friday it had revoked the registration of 15 foreign organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The Russian units of the organisations, which also included the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “were excluded due to the discovery of violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said in a statement.
The decision, which did not give details of any violations, was announced days after New York-based HRW said it had found “several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations” in Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly denied war crimes allegations by Ukraine and Western countries during its six-week-long invasion of Ukraine and denies targeting civilians.
“There is little doubt the move was in response to our reporting on the war in Ukraine,” HRW said.
“The Russian government had already made it abundantly clear that it has no use for any facts regarding the protection of civilians in Ukraine. This is just one small further proof of that,” it said on Twitter.
– The Associated Press
3:45 p.m. ET
Approximately 67 buried in mass grave near Bucha church, Ukrainian officials say
Forensic investigators exhume bodies from the mass grave near St. Andrew's Church in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 8, 2022.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times News Service
The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office says approximately 67 bodies were buried in a mass grave near a church in Bucha, a northern Kyiv suburb where journalists and returning Ukrainians discovered scores of bodies on streets and elsewhere after Russian troops withdrew.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said Friday that 18 bodies had been located so far, 16 with bullet wounds and two with bullet and shrapnel wounds. Two were women and the rest were men, she said.
“This means that they killed civilians, shot them,” Venediktova said, speaking as workers pulled corpses out under spitting rain. Black body bags were laid in rows in the mud.
The prosecutor general’s office is investigating the deaths, and other mass casualties involving civilians, as possible war crimes. Venediktova said the European Union is involved in the investigation and “we are coordinating our actions.”
– The Associated Press
3:35 p.m. ET
EU agrees to freeze assets of Sberbank boss, Putin’s daughters
The European Union has agreed to freeze the assets in the EU of the boss of Russia’s top lender Sberbank, Vladimir Putin’s two daughters and more oligarchs, according to a document published in the EU’s official journal on Friday.
Since the start of war in Ukraine, the EU has blacklisted around 700 people linked to the Kremlin or accused of supporting the invasion, which Moscow calls a “special operation”. That has not always, however, led to a quick freezing of assets, amid legal hurdles and sometimes lack of political will.
The new measures will hit over 200 additional individuals, mostly from the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, and also top businessmen, politicians and military staff close to the Kremlin.
Another 18 entities have also been hit by asset freezes, including four banks, such as VTB, and military firms, nearly doubling the number of companies hit by sanctions since the start of the war.
Herman Gref, the head of Sberbank, has been added to the EU blacklist, according to the document, in a move that is important symbolically. The EU has so far refrained from sanctioning the bank, which plays a key role in energy payments.
Putin’s daughters Ekaterina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova have also now been sanctioned for benefiting from the Russian government, the document said.
– Reuters
3:05 p.m. ET
MPs, Ukrainians call for Parliament’s genocide committee to probe Russian atrocities
Atrocities emerging in Ukraine, following the withdrawal of Russian troops from around the capital Kyiv, have prompted calls for an urgent inquiry by a Canadian parliamentary committee on genocide.
MPs and Ukrainian, Jewish and Armenian groups want the parliamentary committee to probe the discovery of civilian bodies in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv.
The calls came as the RCMP launched a national investigation into allegations of war crimes in Ukraine.
Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi believes the discovery of mass graves and corpses of civilians in areas Russia has withdrawn from must be urgently investigated in Canada’s Parliament to establish whether Putin’s troops committed genocide.
Ehsassi called for the all-party parliamentary group on the prevention of genocide, which stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic, to be re-established with funding to help it carry out an inquiry.
He said the evidence — including from drone footage — suggested that the civilian killings were “absolutely systematic” and not the work “of a few soldiers” going rogue.
– The Canadian Press
2:50 p.m. ET
U.S. believes Russia used short-range ballistic missile in railway station strike
Ukrainian servicemen stand next to damaged cars after Russian shelling at the railway station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 8, 2022.Andriy Andriyenko/The Associated Press
The United States believes Russia used a short range ballistic missile to strike a railway station in east Ukraine on Friday, a senior U.S. defence official said.
Ukraine said at least 50 people were killed and many more wounded in a strike on a station in the city of Kramatorsk that was packed with civilians hoping to flee the threat of a major Russian offensive.
The U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon believes Russian forces used an SS-21 Scarab missile in the strike but that the motivation for the attack was not clear.
The SS-21 is the name used by the NATO military alliance for a type of missile known as the Tochka in former Soviet states.
The United States was still analyzing the strike and it was unclear whether cluster munitions were used, the U.S. official said.
“We are not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren’t responsible,” the official said.
– Reuters
2:30 p.m. ET
Condemning Bucha cruelty, EU offers speedy start for Ukraine membership
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the civilian deaths in the Ukrainian town of Bucha showed the “cruel face” of Russia’s army and pledged to try to speed Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the European Union.
During a visit to Bucha, where forensic investigators started to exhume bodies from a mass grave, von der Leyen looked visibly moved by what she saw in the town northwest of Kyiv where Ukrainian officials say hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian forces.
Russia denies targeting civilians and has called the allegations that Russian forces executed civilians in Bucha while they occupied the town a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating the Russian army.
As EU officials were about to arrive in Kyiv, at least 50 people were killed and many more wounded in a missile strike at a railway station packed with civilians fleeing the threat of a major Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.
– Reuters
1:35 p.m. ET
Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz says
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a briefing room, following a bilateral meeting at Downing Street, in London, Britain, April 8, 2022.POOL/AFP/Getty Images
Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signalling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
Scholz was responding to a journalist’s question about whether he felt a sense of shame that EU countries were paying Russia billions of euros for fossil fuels.
“We are actively working to get independent from the import of (Russian) oil and we think that we will be able to make it during this year,” Scholz said during a news conference in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The European Union this week approved new sanctions against Russia, including a ban on coal imports starting in August. Germany has intensified efforts to reduce its exposure to Russian energy imports following Russian’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine on Feb. 24.
– Reuters
1:20 p.m. ET
Ukrainian forensic investigators start exhuming bodies from Bucha mass grave
Forensic technicians exhume the bodies of civilians who Ukrainian officials say were killed during Russia's invasion and then buried in a mass grave in the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, Ukraine April 8, 2022.VALENTYN OGIRENKO/Reuters
Forensic investigators began exhuming a mass grave in Bucha on Friday, wrapping in black plastic and laying out the bodies of civilians who officials say were killed while Russian troops occupied the town just northwest of Kyiv.
Ruslan Kravchenko, from the prosecutor’s office in Bucha, said they had exhumed 20 bodies, 18 of whom had firearms and shrapnel wounds. He said two women had been identified, one of whom had worked at a supermarket in the town centre.
“There are witnesses who can confirm that these people were killed by the Russian forces. Without any reason, they were just walking down the street or being evacuated,” he told Reuters.
“Some of them were just speaking Ukrainian.”
– Reuters
12:55 p.m. ET
Ruble on mend, Russia bank cuts interest rate
Russia’s central bank says it’s lowering a key interest rate, and said more cuts could be on the way.
The decision indicates the bank thinks strict capital controls and other severe measures are stabilizing Russia’s currency and financial system despite intense pressure from Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
The bank said Friday it lowered its benchmark rate from 20 per cent to 17 per cent, effective Monday. It had raised the rate from 9.5% on Feb. 28 – four days after the invasion – as a way to support the ruble’s plunging exchange rate.
A currency collapse would worsen already high inflation for Russian shoppers by ballooning the cost of imported goods.
The rate increase shows how the central bank has managed to stabilize key aspects of the economy with severe controls, artificially propping up the ruble to allow it to rebound to levels seen before the invasion of Ukraine – even as the West piles on more sanctions.
– The Associated Press
12:05 p.m. ET
Ukraine’s prosecutor general says Kramatorsk rail attack was a ‘crime against humanity’
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova on Friday said a deadly missile strike on a rail station packed with evacuees in the eastern city of Kramatorsk was a “crime against humanity.”
At least 50 people were killed and dozens wounded in the attack that Ukrainian authorities say was carried out by Russian forces.
The Russian defence ministry has denied its troops were behind the strike.
– Reuters
11:21 a.m. ET
Watch: Disturbing video captures the aftermath of attack on railway station
Warning: this video includes graphic content: At least 50 people have been killed, including five children, in a strike on a rail station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the regional governor said on Friday, April 8. Russia denies responsibility for the attack and Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky said in a statement “this is an evil that has no limits.”
11:14 a.m. ET
U.K. promises further $130 million of military equipment for Ukraine
Britain will send Ukraine a further 100 million pounds ($130 million) of military support to Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday after a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“The U.K. will send a further 100 million pounds’ worth of high-grade military equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles … another 800 anti-tank missiles and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target,” Johnson said.
Britain will also provide more helmets, night-vision equipment and body armour, Johnson added at the news conference.
– Reuters
10:08 a.m. ET
Death toll from missile attack in east Ukraine rises to 50, says governor
Men carry a killed body after Russian shelling at the railway station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Friday, April 8, 2022.Andriy Andriyenko/The Associated Press
At least 50 people were killed, including five children, in a missile strike on a rail station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Friday.
In an online post updating an earlier preliminary death toll of 39, Kyrylenko said the dead included victims who had died of their wounds after being taken to hospital or medical centres. Read more.
– Reuters
9:12 a.m. ET
Higher food prices from Ukraine war will push up to 47 million people into acute hunger, UN says
Carine Aimée Kamdem, who sells chickens in a market in Cameroon’s port city of Douala, had to make a hard choice this month. A sharp rise in prices has left her unable to afford bread for her four children, so she was forced to search for cheaper options.
Now her children get lower-quality food, such as local fried doughnuts known as “puff puff.” It leaves them hungry, she says.
“The children say it’s too little,” Ms. Kamdem says. “Honestly, it’s affecting them. It’s hurting us a lot.”
The soaring cost of bread in Cameroon, pushed up by global wheat shortages after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is just one of the war’s shock waves that continue to ripple around the world. Read full story.
– Geoffrey York and Paul Njie
8:21 a.m. ET
Donetsk governor says Russia fired cluster munitions at Kramatorsk rail station
The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Thursday accused Russian forces of firing cluster munitions at a rail station in the city of Kramatorsk in an attack that killed at least 39 people.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko published a photograph online showing several bodies on the ground beside piles of suitcases and other luggage, but did not share what evidence he had of the type of weapon used for the attack. Reuters was not immediately able to verify his allegation.
“If at the beginning they exclusively … targeted railway tracks, then now it’s not only tracks, but also firing a missile containing cluster munitions which are meant for people. This is absolute confirmation that this (strike) was intended against civilians,” Kyrylenko said in an online briefing.
Russia denies targeting civilians. The Russian defence ministry was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the missiles said to have struck the station were used only by Ukraine’s military and that Russia’s armed forces did not have any targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday. Read more.
– Reuters
7:44 a.m. ET
Ukrainian villagers count dead after weeks confined in Yahidne school basement
People stand outside the entrance to the basement of a school, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the village of Yahidne, near to Chernihiv, Ukraine, April 6, 2022.MARKO DJURICA/Reuters
The names of the dead are scrawled on the peeling wall of a school basement where residents say more than 300 people were trapped for weeks by Russian occupiers in Yahidne, a village north of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
Halyna Tolochina, a member of the village council, struggled to compose herself as she went through the list, scribbled in black on the plaster either side of a green door, in the gloomy warren where she said she and hundreds of others were confined.
To the left of the door were scrawled the seven names of people killed by Russian soldiers. To the right were the 10 names of people who died because of the harsh conditions in the basement, she said. Read full story.
– Reuters
7:11 a.m. ET
Boats, helicopters, art: Europe freezes $32 billion of oligarchs’ assets
Eclipse, a superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is docked in the Turkish tourist resort of Marmaris, Turkey March 22, 2022.YORUK ISIK/Reuters
EU governments have frozen about 30 billion euros ($32.6 billion) of assets linked to oligarchs and other sanctioned people with ties to the Kremlin, the European Commission said on Friday.
The assets, totalling 29.5 billion euros since the start of the war in Ukraine, include bank accounts, boats, helicopters, real estate and artwork, according to the Commission, the EU’s executive body.
Additionally, about 196 billion euros of transactions have been blocked, it added.
However, the Commission had no estimate for the total value of oligarchs’ assets in the European Union.
The volume of frozen resources may also represent only a minor share of assets believed to be owned by people sanctioned by the bloc following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. the Netherlands alone has estimated that about 27 billion euros in assets in the country and jurisdictions linked to it belonged to blacklisted oligarchs.
Wealthy individuals can use frontmen or anonymous shell companies and trusts to conceal their assets, which makes it very difficult to identify them, EU officials and diplomats have said, especially in jurisdictions with lax rules on companies’ beneficial owners.
– Reuters
6:56 a.m. ET
Death toll from Kramatorsk rail strike rises to 39 with 87 wounded, says governor
A Ukrainian police walks by calcinated cars outside a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that was being used for civilian evacuations, after it was hit by a rocket attack.FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty Images
At least 39 people were killed and 87 wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a railway station packed with evacuees in east Ukraine on Friday, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, updating an earlier estimate of 30 killed.
In an online post, he said many of the wounded were in a serious condition. Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said no Ukrainian troops were present at the train station at the time of the attack. “Russian forces hit the train station in Kramatorsk, (firing) on an ordinary train station, on ordinary people, there were no soldiers there.” Read more.
– Reuters
6:16 a.m. ET
Russia denies missile strike on Kramatorsk railway station
The remains of a rocket with the Russian lettering "for our children" painted on it is seen on the ground in the aftermath of a rocket attack on the railway station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, in the Donbass region on April 8, 2022.ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Russia’s defence ministry denied that Russian forces were responsible for a missile strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday, the RIA news agency reported.
Ukraine’s state railway company had said more than 30 people had been killed and over 100 wounded in the strike, which occurred as civilians were trying to evacuate to safer parts of the country.
The defence ministry said the missile was of a type used only by the Ukrainian military, and similar to one that hit the centre of the city of Donetsk on March 14, killing 17 people, RIA reported. Read more
– Reuters
5:49 a.m. ET
Britain says 41,000 Ukrainian visas issued amid criticism
People queue for the train to Kiyv at the railway station in Przemysl, southeastern Poland on late April 7, 2022.WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images
The British government said on Friday it had issued 41,000 visas to Ukrainians under schemes to help refugees come to Britain, amid criticism the application process was taking too long and was too complicated.
Last month, Britain set up two schemes to help Ukrainians, one for those with family already in the United Kingdom, and another allowing refugees enter to stay with Britons who had offered accommodation.
According to the latest figures, just under 80,000 applications have so been submitted. For the 36,300 made under the family scheme, 28,500 visas had been issued.
But for the “Homes for Ukraine” scheme, just 12,500 visas had been issued from the 43,600 applications. As of Tuesday, just 1,200 refugees had arrived in Britain under this scheme, according to the data.
Those involved, both Ukrainians and the Britons opening up their homes to refugees, have criticized it for being overly bureaucratic and complicated, meaning some refugees have been left in limbo for weeks waiting to travel to Britain despite having accommodation ready for them.
– Reuters
5:45 a.m. ET
U.K. sanctions Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters
Britain added Vladimir Putin’s daughters to its sanctions list on Friday, mirroring moves by the United States, in what it said was an effort to target the lifestyles of those in the Russian president’s inner circle.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Britain and other Western allies have announced several waves of sanctions targeting Moscow’s wealthy elites, key industries and its access to the international financial system.
An update to Britain’s sanctions list announced asset freezes on Putin’s adult daughters Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, and Sergeyevna Vinokurova, the daughter of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. All three were sanctioned by the United States earlier this week.
“Our unprecedented package of sanctions is hitting the elite and their families, while degrading the Russian economy on a scale Russia hasn’t seen since the fall of the Soviet Union,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.
Britain also said its analysis showed Russia is heading for the deepest recession since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Britain estimates that 60 per cent of Russian foreign currency reserves have been frozen as a result of international sanctions.
– Reuters
5:38 a.m. ET
Russian rocket strike on east Ukrainian rail station kills scores of evacuees
A man carries an injured dog after a rocket attack on the railway station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, in the Donbass region on April 8, 2022.HERVE BAR/AFP/Getty Images
More than 30 people were killed and over 100 were wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a railway station in east Ukraine on Friday as civilians tried to evacuate to safer parts of the country, the state railway company said.
It said two Russian rockets had struck a station in the city of Kramatorsk which is used for the evacuation of civilians from areas under bombardment by Russian forces.
“Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station,” Ukrainian Railways said in a statement.
It later added: “According to operational data, more than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in the rocket attack on Kramatorsk railway station.”
Reuters could not verify the information. Russia did not immediately comment on the reports of the attack and the casualty toll. Moscow has denied targeting civilians since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24. Read full story.
– Reuters