Russia’s Defence Ministry revealed on Thursday August 25, its military had struck a railway station in eastern Ukraine, confirming a Wednesday attack which Kyiv says also hit a residential area and killed 25 civilians as the nation marked its Independence Day.
In its daily briefing, the Russian Defence ministry said an Iskander missile had hit a military train on Wednesday at the station of Chaplyne that had been set to deliver arms to Ukrainian forces on the frontline in the eastern Donbas region.
Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said 21 people were killed when the strike hit the railway station and set five train carriages ablaze, while a young boy died when a missile hit his home in the location. The death toll rose to 25 on Thursday after three more bodies were retrieved from rubble, Tymoshenko confirmed.
According to the Russian ministry, about 200 Ukrainian military personnel had died in the attack.
The Chaplyne attack and artillery shelling of frontline towns, including Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Nikopol and Dnipro, came after Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s warnings of Russian provocations before the Wednesday’s 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence from Moscow-dominated Soviet rule.
Aug. 24 also marked six months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, starting Europe’s most devastating conflict since World War Two.