MASSACRE OF THE FLEEING FAMILIES

DOZENS FEARED DEAD AS PUTIN TARGETS RAIL STATION PACKED WITH CIVILIANS IN THE EAST

- Nicholas Cecil

MORE than 30 people were feared killed in Russian rocket strikes on a railway station today that was reportedly packed with thousands desperately seeking to flee eastern Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, also warned that atrocities against civilians in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, were “significantly more dreadful” than those committed in Bucha, which appalled the world.

As Vladimir Putin’s forces completed their retreat from Kyiv and northern Ukraine, more appalling stories were emerging of the killing of civilians, the murder of 40 children, rapes, torture and using people as human shields.

This morning Ukrainian state railway bosses said at least 30 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded in Russian rocket strikes on Kramatorsk train station, in the east of the country.

Civic chiefs said there were about 4,000 people in the city’s station when it was hit by the rockets, mostly women, elderly and children. They were seeking to escape from the Donetsk area before an expected military onslaught by Mr Putin’s forces on the Donbas eastern region.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told BBC radio: “We see the willingness of Russia to inflict suffering, death and destruction on Ukraine at a scale we have not seen since the Second World War.” As the West escalated its response to the Russian president’s invasion, Boris Johnson, who was holding talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in No10 today, was expected to announce a new package of military support for Ukraine this afternoon.