Ukraine War Live News: Putin to Increase Size of Russian Military – The New York Times

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The Russian missile strike at a train station in Chaplyne, Ukraine, was the deadliest attack on Ukraine’s railway since April.CreditCredit…Leo Correa/Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine — As rescue workers sifted through twisted metal wreckage on Thursday, officials said the death toll from Russian strikes in and around a train station in eastern Ukraine had risen to 25, including at least five people who had burned to death inside a train car. It was the deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians in weeks, and a grisly reminder that the grueling war, now in its seventh month, continued to exact a bloody toll.

The attacks, which came as Ukraine celebrated its Independence Day, highlighted “how we live every day,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told the United Nations Security Council in a remote address on Wednesday. Mr. Zelensky said that 22 people had been killed in the strike on the train station, in Chaplyne, about 74 miles east of the city of Dnipro in Ukrainian-controlled territory, during his address.

“There is no such war crime that the Russian occupiers have not yet committed on the territory of Ukraine,” he told the assembled world leaders.

Several rockets struck Chaplyne on Wednesday, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an official in Mr. Zelensky’s office, said on Telegram. In the same area, Mr. Tymoshenko said, an 11-year-old died when a missile hit the village and destroyed his house.

Four Russian rockets later struck in and around the train station, Mr. Tymoshenko said, causing five passenger cars to catch fire. It was among the deadliest attacks on the country’s railways since April, when more than 50 people were killed when a rocket slammed into a crowded train platform in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the target of the strike in Chaplyne was a military train delivering equipment to the front lines, although the claim could not be verified. Mr. Tymoshenko said that the rockets hit passenger cars.

While Ukraine braced for intensified Russian bombardment on its Independence Day, by Thursday morning, the ledger of long-range missile strikes looked much the same as it had in recent weeks.

In addition to the strikes on Chaplyne, Ukrainian officials said that Russians had used cluster munitions in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine, wounding two civilians, and also in the city of Kryvyi Rih in the south, where the damage was still being assessed. Missiles hit near the central Ukrainian town of Poltava, officials said, as well as in the Kyiv region. No casualties were reported in those strikes.

Ukrainian National Railways had no immediate comment. But the railway has played an outsize role during the war, providing a critical lifeline for millions fleeing the fighting. Trains have also helped bring in more than 100,000 tons of humanitarian aid. Strikes on moving train cars have been exceedingly rare, and the circumstances of Wednesday’s strike were not immediately clear.

After a day spent making defiant speeches and paying tribute to those killed in the war, Mr. Zelensky used his evening address to urge the country to stay united in the face of constant sorrow.

“There are no such bombs that can erase freedom,” he said, “and there will never be such missiles that can break the will of the people who believe in themselves.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/25/world/ukraine-russia-war-news

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