There has been an outpouring of outrage after a Russian rocket strike on a railway station.
World leaders including Boris Johnson and Joe Biden reacted in horror to the scenes.
At least 50 people have been killed - including five children - in a Russian rocket strike on a railway station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Friday.
The railway was reportedly packed with thousands desperately seeking to flee eastern Ukraine.
Humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said they had witnessed hundreds of people crowding the station trying to evacuate by train.
Christopher Stokes, MSF emergency coordinator in Ukraine, said: “I am horrified by reports of bombing or a missile strike today on Kramatorsk station. We were there yesterday, and we saw hundreds of people crowding the station, trying to leave.
“The hospitals had been urgently calling us to evacuate their patients by train. Most came from Sievierodonestk and other towns in Luhansk region. We were just in time with this train.
“Big questions whether we will be able to go back to evacuate more people.”
Outrage saw Johnson condemn the attack on fleeing civilians at the Kramatorsk train station.
He called it “unconscionable” as he suggested Putin’s forces were guilty of a war crime.
He told a Downing Street press conference: “The attack at the train station in eastern Ukraine shows the depth to which Putin’s once vaunted army has sunk.
“At least 39 people killed and dozens wounded on a train platform crowded with women and children. It is a war crime indiscriminately to attack civilians and Russian crimes in Ukraine will not go unnoticed or unpunished.”
Joe Biden said it was “yet another horrific atrocity committed by Russia”.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, also warned atrocities against civilians in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, were “significantly more dreadful” than those committed in Bucha, which appalled the world.
As Vladimir Putin’s forces completed their retreat from Kyiv and northern Ukraine, more appalling stories were emerging of the killing of civilians, the murder of 40 children, rapes, torture and using people as human shields.
On Friday morning, more than 100 were left wounded in Russian rocket strikes on Kramatorsk train station, in the east of the country.
Civic chiefs said there were about 4,000 people in the city’s station when it was hit by the rockets, mostly women, elderly and children.
They were seeking to escape from the Donetsk area before an expected military onslaught by Mr Putin’s forces on the Donbas eastern region.
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told BBC radio: “We see the willingness of Russia to inflict suffering, death and destruction on Ukraine at a scale we have not seen since the Second World War.”
As the West escalated its response to the Russian president’s invasion, Johnson - who was holding talks with German chancellor Olaf Scholz in No1 - announced a new package of military support for Ukraine on Friday.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss also announced more sanctions against the Kremlin regime including travel bans and asset freezes on Mr Putin’s daughters Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, and on the daughter of foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vinokurova.
The Government also claimed more than £275 billion of “Putin’s war chest” had been frozen by co-ordinated UK and international sanctions in recent weeks, and that analysis showed Russia was heading for the deepest recession since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with its GDP forecast to nosedive by between 8.5 per cent and 15 per cent this year.
Ukraine has pleaded with Germany and other Nato members to supply it with more weapons to fight the Russian invaders.
On a visit to Bucharest, Romania, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “We have to do more to help the Ukrainians stand and fight.”
In Bucha, near Kyiv, more than 300 civilians were reported to have been killed by Russian troops.
Some of them were found with their hands tied behind their back and shot in the head, a sign of execution.
However, in a video posted on Telegram, Mr Zelensky warned of the atrocities in Borodyanka, 37 miles north west of the capital, where scores of people were feared to have died in buildings which collapsed after being hit by shelling or air strikes.
“It’s significantly more dreadful there. Even more victims from the Russian occupiers,” he said.
Families looking for relatives watched diggers search through the rubble of one apartment block in Borodyanka which had a population of around 13,000.
Most of the building was charred and its middle section had been razed to the ground, leaving a gaping hole.
“My mother, my brother, brother’s wife, his mother and father-in-law, are still there, as well as other people who were there in the basement,” said resident Vadym Zagrebelnyi.
“But there were other people on the upper floors there, and with children too. And I know for sure that they didn’t come out.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said in the Kyiv region - which includes Borodyanka, Bucha and other towns and villages such as Irpin - the authorities had found “650 dead bodies, from them it is 40 dead bodies only kids”.
The Kremlin denies targeting civilians - although this claim is countered by a huge catalogue of reports, photos and footage of the reality on the ground.
Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador in London, told Sky News: “Bucha is not the only place. We are uncovering more and more Russian atrocities as we are liberating small towns.”
The harrowing reports of alleged attacks on civilians include:
- Russian troops forced civilians in the village of Obukhovychi, 60 miles from Kyiv, to go to the local school where they were used as human shields against Ukrainian forces, according to the BBC.
- Russian soldiers allegedly filming on a phone them raping a 15-year-old girl in a suburb near Kyiv, whose mother bled to death in a basement in front of her eyes, according to a report by ITV.
- Around 130 people in Yahidne, near Chernihiv, were reportedly held for weeks in a school basement.
- German intelligence is reported to have intercepted radio messages between Russian troops discussing killing civilians in Bucha.
- Meanwhile, a social media video verified by Reuters and geolocated to an area west of Kyiv appears to show Ukrainian forces killing a captured and badly wounded Russian soldier.
