Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday denounced Russia for a missile strike that hit a train station in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 300.
The missile strike happened earlier in the morning in Kramatorsk, a city located in the disputed Donbas region.
“That’s how Russia came to ‘defend’ Donbas. That’s how Russia came to ‘protect’ Russian-speaking people,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in an address to Finland’s parliament.
Local officials said thousands of people were at the station, trying to evacuate the region when the attack occurred.
“The Russians knew where they were hitting and who they were targeting,” Ukrainian officials said on the Telegram social messaging page. “They wanted to destroy everything Ukrainian.”
Russia has reportedly denied firing the missile. A Kremlin spokesperson told the BBC that Russia had no missions in the area where the train station was hit.
Mr. Zelenskyy said the evidence is overwhelming that it was a Russian missile.
“There are witnesses. There are videos,” he said. “There are remnants of missiles but there are no more people.”
In recent days, Ukrainian officials said people were running out of time to evacuate the Donbas region.
NATO officials expect a protracted fight in Ukraine even though Russia has withdrawn from Kyiv and focused its attacks on eastern regions partially controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence on Friday said Russian forces have fully withdrawn from northern Ukraine to Belarus and Russia, and at least some of these forces will be transferred to east Ukraine to fight in the Donbas.
Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the headline
• Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this report.