Russia claims train station strike killed over 200 Ukrainian troops

Moscow says attack took out reserve unit ‘en route to combat zones,’ but Ukraine says 25 dead including kids; occurred on Ukraine’s independence day, 6 months after invasion began

By AFP 25 August 2022, 2:34 pm

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People attend a ceremony for the fallen soldiers of Ukraine at the Lychakiv Cemetery in western Ukrainian city of Lviv on August 24, 2022 (YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP)

MOSCOW — Russia’s defense ministry said Thursday that it killed over 200 Ukrainian troops in a railway station attack in central Ukraine that Kyiv said left 25 people, including children, dead.

“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 in its daily briefing.

It added that the train was “en route to combat zones” in the eastern Donbas region that Moscow seeks to fully control.

The EU has condemned the “heinous” attack on civilians that was carried out on the day Ukraine marked Independence Day and six months since the start of Moscow’s military intervention.

Ukraine’s railways have been vital in the effort to evacuate vast swaths of the country since Moscow sent in troops.

In April, a rocket attack on a station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk killed at least 57 civilians as they waited on the platform to be transported west to safety.