Human Rights Watch ends 10-month investigation into missile attack on Kramatorsk train station
The Russians denied involvement in the killing of civilians, claiming the Ukrainians were shooting themselves.
On the morning of April 8, 2022, the Russian army launched a missile attack on the train station in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, just as thousands of people were gathered there waiting to be evacuated. The attack killed 61 people and injured 121 others. The occupiers used a Tochka-U missile to launch the attack, cynically denying that they had the weapon and blaming the attack on the Ukrainian armed forces.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), together with the SITU research group, after a 10-month investigation into the incident, confirmed in its investigation that the Russian military was behind the attack on the train station, Human Rights Watch said .
As part of the investigation, the experts interviewed 69 people, including victims of the shelling, relatives of the dead, rescue workers, doctors, medical staff, officials and employees of the Ukrainian prosecutor's office. The experts analysed over 200 videos and photos from the scene, studied satellite images and examined former positions of the Russian military near the village of Kunya in Kharkiv Region, where they believe the missile was launched.
The conclusions reached by the investigators:
▪️Ракета, which hit the railway station in Kramatorsk, was launched from the then Russian-occupied territory - from the village of Kunye, 25 km from Izyum.
▪️Ракета was launched from the Tochka-U tactical missile system. A 6-metre rocket with a cassette warhead containing 50 submunitions - mini-bombs.
▪️Во the time of impact is detonated, scattering steel shrapnel. 15 thousand of these shrapnel, designed to maim and kill, scattered across the railway station.
▪️Площадь the impact is very large. Investigators found shrapnel from 32 of the 50 clusters both at the station itself and on the railway tracks and areas around the station.
▪️HRW confirms the presence of some Ukrainian troops near the station. But found no evidence of any Ukrainian military personnel or equipment on the tracks of the station at the time of the strike.
▪️Ж/d stations and tracks may be legitimate military targets. But the use of cluster munitions during an attack on a station with hundreds of civilians violates the laws of war.
▪️Россия has consistently denied using Tochka-U as it was allegedly decommissioned in 2019. But HRW has found evidence of Tochka-U in occupied territory, including depots and shipping containers.
▪️На satellite images from 6 June in Kunya village (two months after the strike) show Tochka-U transport containers.
▪️В in September after Izyum was liberated, HRW visited Kunya and found remains of missile containers at launch sites. From Kunya village to Kramatorsk 77 km. Tochka-U hits 120 km.
▪️HRW concludes that the strike on the railway station in Kramatorsk was illegally indiscriminate. Those who gave and carried out the order should be held responsible for the war crime.
On the morning of 8 April 2022, more than 500 civilians were at the Kramatorsk railway station, waiting for a train to take them to safe areas in western Ukraine.
Local authorities had publicly urged people to evacuate the day before and posted evacuation train timetables in Telegram feeds and other sources. It was clear that this was the place to evacuate civilians. Those who carried out the attack must have known this.
As early as 10:28, a ballistic missile exploded over the station, scattering dozens of submunitions around. As they hit the ground, the submunitions exploded, injuring people inside the station. People's arms and legs were torn off, including children.
Russia officially denies responsibility for the attack on the train station in Kramatorsk.