Civilians flee eastern Ukraine; 2 European leaders visit Kyiv in show of support

2 European leaders visit Kyiv in show of support

Women wait for food from a soup kitchen Saturday in war-ravaged Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.
(AP/Rodrigo Abd)
Women wait for food from a soup kitchen Saturday in war-ravaged Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP/Rodrigo Abd)


KYIV, Ukraine -- Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine on Saturday, a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station where thousands clamored to leave before a Russian onslaught.

In the wake of the attack in Kramatorsk, several European leaders made efforts to show solidarity with Ukraine, with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visiting Kyiv -- the capital city that Russian troops failed to capture, prompting a retreat several days ago.

Johnson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a surprise visit in which he pledged new military assistance, including 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems.

In an Associated Press interview, Zelenskyy noted the increased support from Europe and said deliveries of U.S. weapons have been accelerating, but he expressed frustration when asked if the weapons and other equipment Ukraine has received from the West are sufficient to shift the war's outcome.

"Not yet," he said. "Of course it's not enough."

Zelenskyy was also asked what impact the pace of arms deliveries had for his people and whether more lives could have been saved if the help had come sooner.

"Very often we look for answers in someone else, but I often look for answers in myself. Did we do enough to get them?" he said of the weapons. "Did we do enough for these leaders to believe in us? Did we do enough?"

He paused and shook his head.

"Are we the best for this place and this time? Who knows? I don't know. You question yourself," he said.

Zelenskyy later thanked Johnson and Nehammer during his nightly video address to the nation. He also thanked the European Commission president and the Canadian prime minister for a global fundraising event that raised more than $11 billion for Ukrainians who have had to flee their homes. He added that democratic countries are united in working to stop the war.

"Because Russian aggression was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone ... the entire European project is a target for Russia," he said.

Zelenskyy repeated his call for a complete embargo on Russian oil and gas, which he called the sources of Moscow's "self-confidence and impunity."

Nehammer said during his visit to Kyiv that he expects more EU sanctions against Russia, but he defended his country's opposition so far to cutting off deliveries of Russian gas.

A package of sanctions imposed last week "won't be the last one," the chancellor said, acknowledging that "as long as people are dying, every sanction is still insufficient." Austria is militarily neutral and not a member of NATO.

Johnson's visit came a day after the U.K. pledged an additional $130 million in high-grade military equipment to Ukraine.

Johnson also confirmed further economic support, guaranteeing an additional $500 million in World Bank lending to Ukraine, taking Britain's total loan guarantee to up to $1 billion.

More than six weeks after the invasion began, Russia has pulled its troops from the northern part of the country, around Kyiv, and refocused on the Donbas region in the east. Western military analysts said an arc of territory in eastern Ukraine was under Russian control, from Kharkiv -- Ukraine's second-largest city -- in the north to Kherson in the south. But counterattacks are threatening Russian control of Kherson, according to the Western assessments, and Ukrainian forces are repelling Russian assaults elsewhere in the Donbas.

Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to get out ahead of an imminent, stepped-up offensive by Russian forces in the east. With trains not running out of Kramatorsk on Saturday, residents boarded buses or looked for other ways to leave, fearing the kind of assaults and occupations by Russian invaders that led to food shortages, demolished buildings and deaths in other cities.

Ukraine's state railway company said residents of Kramatorsk and other parts of the Donbas could flee through other train stations. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned for Saturday.

Zelenskyy called the train station attack the latest example of war crimes by Russian forces and said it should motivate the West to do more to help his country defend itself.

Russia denied responsibility and accused Ukraine's military of firing on the station to turn blame for civilian casualties on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile's trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions in an attempt to bolster the argument.

Major Gen. Igor Konashenkov alleged that Ukraine's security services were preparing a "cynical staged" media operation in Irpin, another town near Kyiv, intended to attribute civilian casualties to Russian forces -- falsely, he said -- and to stage the slaying of a fake Russian intelligence team that intended to kill witnesses. The claims could not be independently verified.

Western experts and Ukrainian authorities insisted that Russia attacked the station. Remnants of the rocket had the words "For the children" in Russian painted on it. The phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear.

Ukrainian authorities have worked to identify victims and document possible war crimes in the country's north. The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graphic evidence of civilian slayings emerged after Russian forces withdrew, said search teams were still finding bodies of people shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.

Workers unearthed 67 bodies Friday from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general. Russia has claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

Ukrainian and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of committing atrocities. A total of 176 children have been killed, while 324 more have been wounded, the prosecutor general's office said Saturday.

Speaking to reporters inside the heavily guarded presidential office complex in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said he is committed to negotiating a diplomatic end to the war. Despite those hopes for peace, Zelenskyy acknowledged that he must be "realistic" about the prospects for a swift resolution given that negotiations have so far been limited to low-level talks that do not include Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"No one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation. It's all understandable. And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well," Zelenskyy said. But "we don't want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution."

"We have to fight, but fight for life. You can't fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That's why it is important to stop this war," he said.

Ukrainian authorities have said they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.

As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theater last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.

Military analysts had predicted for weeks that Russia would succeed in taking Mariupol but said Ukrainian defenders were still putting up a fight. The city's location on the Sea of Azov is critical to establishing a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.

Russian troops who withdrew from northern Ukraine are now regrouping for what is expected to be an intensified push to retake the eastern Donbas region, including Mariupol.

The president said those defenders are tying up "a big part of the enemy forces," characterizing the battle to hold Mariupol as "the heart of the war" right now.

"It's beating. We're fighting. We're strong. And if it stops beating, we will be in a weaker position," he said.

Many civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region.

RUSSIA EXPELS GROUPS

Separately, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced Friday that it had revoked the registration of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a dozen other international organizations and foreign nonprofit organizations.

The ministry said the groups "were expelled after they were found to be in breach of the current legislation of the Russian Federation." It did not specify what laws were allegedly broken.

Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said the group's work exposing Russian war crimes would continue even with the Moscow office's closure.

"Amnesty's closing down in Russia is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have been punished for defending human rights and speaking the truth to the Russian authorities," Callamard said.

"In a country where scores of activists and dissidents have been imprisoned, killed or exiled, where independent media has been smeared, blocked or forced to self-censor, and where civil society organizations have been outlawed or liquidated, you must be doing something right if the Kremlin tries to shut you up," Callamard said.

Information for this article was contributed by Adam Shreck, Mstyslav Chernov, Cara Anna, Evgeniy Maloletka, Robert Burns, Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka of The Associated Press; and by Dalton Bennett, David L. Stern, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Claire Parker, Liz Sly, Adela Suliman, Julian Duplain, Isabella Khurshudyan, Dan Lamothe, Meryl Kornfield, Miriam Berger, Christine Armario, Lateshia Beachum, Yeganeh Torbati, Marisa Iati and Andrew Jeong of The Washington Post.

  photo  Oleksandr a Skolota, 83, poses for a picture after receiving free food from a soup kitchen in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
 
 
  photo  Firefighters work to secure a building previously damaged by a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
 
 
  photo  A man with a bicycle walks in front of a destroyed apartment building in the town of Borodyanka, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 9, 2022. Russian troops occupied the town of Borodyanka for weeks. Several apartment buildings were destroyed during fighting between the Russian troops and the Ukrainian forces in the town around 40 miles northwest of Kiev. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
 
 
  photo  Emergency workers remove the body of a resident of a multi-storey building destroyed in a Russian air raid at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in Borodyanka, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
 
 
  photo  Firefighters work on a destroyed apartment building in the town of Borodyanka, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 9, 2022. Russian troops occupied the town of Borodyanka for weeks. Several apartment buildings were destroyed during fighting between the Russian troops and the Ukrainian forces in the town around 40 miles northwest of Kiev. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
 
 
  photo  Vlad, 6, plays cards with a friend inside his house in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. Vlad's mother died during their confinement in a basement for more than a month during the occupation of the Russian army. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
 
 
  photo  A relative cries as a body of a civilian killed in a Russian air raid at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, was loaded on a van in Borodyanka close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Apr. 9, 2022. Borodyanka was occupied by the Russian troops and freed in a month by the Ukrainian army, which allowed emergency workers to search civilian bodies under the ruins. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
 
 
  photo  Gregoriev warms himself with a fire in the yard of his house in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022, which was badly damaged in the war caused by Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
 
 
  photo  Firefighters work on a destroyed apartment building in the town of Borodyanka, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 9, 2022. Russian troops occupied the town of Borodyanka for weeks. Several apartment buildings were destroyed during fighting between the Russian troops and the Ukrainian forces in the town around 40 miles northwest of Kiev. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
 
 


  photo  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) walks through downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, on Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Johnson promised further military and economic support for Ukraine. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukrainemonth2/. (AP/Ukrainian Presidential Press Office)
 
 


  photo  People crowd the train station Saturday in Dnipro, a key transit point for thousands of civilians fleeing the Russian onslaught in eastern Ukraine. Many were waiting to board buses headed for Bulgaria. (The New York Times/Tyler Hicks)
 
 


  photo  Firefighters and excavators continue to remove debris and search for bodies Saturday around a bombed-out apartment building in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine. (The New York Times/Daniel Berehulak)
 
 



 Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 2



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