39 killed in rocket attack in Ukraine

Chernihiv (Ukraine): Ukrainian leaders predicted more gruesome discoveries would be made in reclaimed cities and towns as Russian soldiers retreat to focus on eastern Ukraine, where officials said a Russian rocket attack on a packed train station used to evacuate civilians killed as many as 39 people on Friday.

Hours after warning that Ukraine's forces already had found worse scenes of brutality in a settlement north of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that "thousands" of people were at the station in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region, when it was hit by a missile. Zelenskyy accompanied a social media post with photos that showed a train car with smashed windows, abandoned luggage and bodies lying in what looked like an outdoor waiting area. Authorities said the strike wounded more than 100 people.

"The inhuman Russians are not changing their methods. Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population," the president said. "This is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop." After failing to take Ukraine's capital, Russia has shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and control some areas.

Ukrainian officials warned residents this week to leave as soon as possible for safer parts of the country and said they and Russia had agreed to establish multiple evacuation routes in the east. Kramatorsk is located in government-controlled territory. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy predicted more gruesome discoveries would be made in northern cities and towns the Russians withdrew from the concentrate on eastern Ukraine.

"And what will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian troops did in Mariupol?" Zelenskyy had said late on Thursday, referring to the besieged southern port that has seen some of the greatest suffering since Russia invaded Ukraine.