A missile strike on Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine has left at least 30 people dead and more than 100 wounded, according to reports from Ukraine’s state train company. The mayor of Kramatorsk said there were 4,000 people, most of them elderly, women and children, at the station at the time of the attack. Russia has denied it was responsible.
Ukraine has announced it is aiming to open 10 humanitarian corridors for civilian evacuations on Friday. Once again, civilians hoping to escape from Mariupol will have to use their own vehicles – there will be no convoy of buses.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the situation in the town of Borodianka was “much worse” than in nearby Bucha.
The Kremlin has admitted sustaining “significant losses” of troops in a rare admission of how badly the war has gone for Moscow so far. In an interview with Sky News, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was asked whether the war had amounted to a humiliation for Russia given the number of troops lost. He replied: “We have significant losses of troops. And it’s a huge tragedy for us.”
Russian forces have fully withdrawn from Ukraine’s north to Belarus and Russia, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said. “At least some of these forces will be transferred to east Ukraine to fight in the Donbas,” the report added.
Russia said it had destroyed a training centre for foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, north of Odesa, without providing evidence.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said any temporary truce with Russia would just be a war postponed, and that Ukraine was working on the possibility of evacuating civilians from Mariupol by sea.
The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said this year’s grain harvest was likely to be 20% down on last year because of a reduced sowing area after Russia’s invasion.
Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, invited Peskov to come to Bucha to see the reality for himself “if he has stomach to face these people” after the Kremlin spokesperson denied Russian troops had committed any atrocities there. Ukraine is investigating 5,149 alleged cases of war crimes committed by Russian forces, the prosecutor’s office has revealed.
Prystaiko also tried to reassure people that Ukraine would investigate any claims of war crimes against its troops, saying: “We’re making this very clear to all our soldiers that there are some limits. Τhe military are fighting. There are some limits. And each and every incident will be investigated.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the EU representative Josep Borrell are on their way to Kyiv. Von der Leyen shared a photo of herself stepping off a Ukrainian train alongside the caption “looking forward to Kyiv”.
The UK has added Vladimir Putin’s daughters to its sanctions list, along with the daughter of Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is to meet the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in London on Friday as they look to discuss how to help European countries wean themselves off Russian gas.
The UK’s Home Office says that 12,000 people have arrived in the UK under the Ukraine visa schemes as of Tuesday.
The Nobel-prize-winning newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov says he was attacked on a train in Russia on Thursday by an assailant who poured red paint on him.
In diplomatic developments, Poland’s ambassador to Russia has been summoned to the Russian foreign ministry. Japan has announced that it is expelling eight Russian diplomats, and Montenegro has ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats
