KRAMATORSK, Ukraine: Evacuations resumed on Saturday from Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, where a missile strike killed 52 people at a railway station, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the latest Western leader to visit Kyiv.
Hailing the country’s response to the Russian invasion, Johnson offered Ukraine armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles to help ensure, he said, that the country will “never be invaded again.”
Because of the “invincible heroism and courage” of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, Russia’s “monstrous aims are being thwarted,” he said.
A video released by Zelensky’s office showed him and Johnson walking through largely empty city streets to Kyiv’s historic Maidan Square, as snipers kept watch.
The two men greeted passersby, and one visibly emotional man called out to Johnson, “We need you.”
Johnson, who a day earlier pledged to send Ukraine weaponry including Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles and 800 anti-tank missiles, added that the discovery of scores of civilian bodies in Ukrainian towns had “permanently polluted” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reputation.
Six weeks into Russia’s invasion, Moscow has shifted its focus to eastern and southern Ukraine after stiff resistance thwarted plans to swiftly capture Kyiv.
With thousands killed in fighting and more than 11 million fleeing their homes or the country, the Ukrainian president called on the West to follow Britain’s example on military aid.
“We need even more sanctions” against Russia, Zelensky said in a video address Saturday evening. “We need more weapons for our state.”
EU leaders were meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday as news emerged of the devastating attack on Kramatorsk’s station. The 52 victims included five children.
US President Joe Biden accused Russia of being behind a “horrific atrocity” in Kramatorsk, and France condemned the strike as a “crime against humanity.”
Moscow denied responsibility for the rocket attack, which also wounded 109 people, according to the latest official count.
As Russian forces regroup in the east and south of Ukraine, local officials are urging residents to flee before it is too late.
On Saturday, the mayor of eastern Lysychansk, Oleksandr Zaika, called on residents to evacuate as soon as possible due to constant shelling by the Russian army.
“It has become very difficult in the city, enemy shells are already flying,” Zaika said in a video message. While the city had stocks of humanitarian aid, he added, “that doesn’t mean it will save your life if an enemy shell arrives.”
And more Russian shells did arrive on Saturday, killing five people in the eastern cities of Vugledar and Novo Mikhaylovka, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.
Meanwhile, in Kramatorsk minibuses assembled at a church to collect shaken evacuees. Almost 80 people, most of them elderly, sheltered in a building near the targeted station.
“There were around 300 to 400 people who rushed here after the strike,” Yevgeny, a member of the Protestant church, told AFP.
“They were traumatized. Half of them ran to shelter in the cellar, others wanted to leave as soon as possible. Some were evacuated by bus” on Friday.
The Kramatorsk station was serving as the main evacuation hub for refugees from parts of the eastern Donbas region still under Ukrainian control.
AFP reporters at the station saw the remains of a missile tagged in white paint with the words “for our children” in Russian — an expression used by pro-Russian separatists to invoke their own losses since fighting in Donbas began in 2014.
The governor of Donetsk claimed a missile with cluster munitions — banned by an international treaty — was used in the attack, according to remarks published by the Interfax news agency.
Speaking Saturday from Warsaw, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a global pledging event for Ukrainian refugees has raised 10.1 billion euros ($11 billion).
In another sign of Western solidarity, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer also visited Kyiv and the nearby town of Bucha on Saturday.
Bucha — where authorities say hundreds were killed, some with their hands bound — has become a byword for the brutality allegedly inflicted under Russian occupation. And Ukrainian officials say they are uncovering even greater devastation in nearby towns.
In a joint news conference with the Austrian leader, Zelensky said Ukraine was “still ready” to continue negotiations with Moscow — talks stalled by the killings in Bucha and elsewhere.
Ukraine said Saturday it had completed a third prisoner exchange with Russia, bringing 12 soldiers and 14 civilians home.
Russian troops appear intent on creating a long-sought land link between occupied Crimea and the Moscow-backed separatist territories of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbas region.
Moscow said Russian troops had fired on a Ukrainian vessel trying to evacuate commanders of the Azov battalion from the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol.
The Azov Special Operations Detachment has been fighting Russian forces in Mariupol — scene of some of the war’s most grievous civilian suffering — as it lies between Russia-occupied Crimea and pro-Russian separatist regions in Ukraine’s east.
Moscow’s defense ministry, underscoring Russian advances, said its forces had destroyed an ammunition depot in the Dnipro region and struck 85 Ukrainian military targets in the previous 24 hours.
Fresh allegations also emerged from Obukhovychi, northwest of Kyiv, where villagers told AFP they were used as human shields.
Moscow has denied targeting civilians, but growing evidence of atrocities has galvanized Ukraine’s allies in the EU, which has approved an embargo on Russian coal and the closure of its ports to Russian vessels.
The bloc has frozen 30 billion euros ($33 billion) in assets from blacklisted Russian and Belarusian individuals and companies, it said Friday.
It also blacklisted Putin’s two adult daughters — not long after the US and Britain did the same — as part of its latest sanctions package, according to an official list.
As sanctions bite, credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings downgraded Russia’s foreign currency payments rating to “selective default” after Moscow paid a dollar-denominated debt in rubles this week.
Civilians flee eastern Ukraine after deadly railway station attack
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Civilians flee eastern Ukraine after deadly railway station attack
- Six weeks into Russia’s invasion, Moscow has shifted its focus to eastern and southern Ukraine after stiff resistance thwarted plans to swiftly capture Kyiv
With Iran war exit elusive, Trump aides vie to affect outcome
- Aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East
- In taking America to war, US President Donald Trump offered little explanation
WASHINGTON: A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving US President Donald Trump’s shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East.
Some officials and advisers are warning Trump that surging gasoline prices could exact a political cost from the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, while some hawks are pressing the president to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic, according to interviews with a Trump adviser and others close to the deliberations.
Their observations to Reuters offer a previously unreported glimpse inside White House decision-making as it adjusts its approach to the biggest US military operation since the 2003 Iraq war.
Shifting messages, various internal viewpoints
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering underscores the high stakes Trump, who returned to office last year promising to avoid “stupid” military interventions, faces nearly two weeks after plunging the nation into a war that has rattled global financial markets and disrupted the international oil trade.
The jockeying for Trump’s ear is a feature of his presidency, but this time the consequences are a matter of war and peace in one of the world’s most volatile and economically critical regions.
Shifting from the sweeping goals he framed in launching the war on February 28, Trump in recent days has emphasized that he views the conflict as a limited campaign whose objectives have mostly been met.
But the message remains unclear to many, including the energy markets, which have lurched in both directions in response to Trump’s statements.
He told a campaign-style rally in Kentucky on Wednesday that “we won” the war, then abruptly pivoted: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”
Economic advisers and officials, including from the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council, have warned Trump that an oil shock and rising gasoline prices could quickly erode domestic support for the war, said the adviser and two others close to the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.
Political advisers, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief James Blair, are making similar arguments, focusing on the political fallout from higher gas prices and urging Trump to define victory narrowly and signal the operation is limited and nearly finished, the sources said.
Pushing in the other direction are hawkish voices urging Trump to sustain military pressure on Iran, including Republican lawmakers such as US Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, and media commentators such as Mark Levin, according to people familiar with the matter.
They argue the US must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and respond forcefully to attacks on American troops and shipping.
A third force comes from Trump’s populist base and figures such as strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing television personality Tucker Carlson, who have been pressing him and his top aides to avoid getting dragged into another prolonged Middle East conflict.
“He is allowing the hawks to believe the campaign continues, wants markets to believe the war might end soon and his base to believe escalation will be limited,” the Trump adviser said.
Asked for comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “This story is based on gossip and speculation from anonymous sources who aren’t even in the room for any discussions with President Trump.
“The President is known for being a good listener and seeking the opinions of many people, but ultimately everyone knows he’s the final decision maker and his own best messenger,” she said. “The President’s entire team is focused on ensuring the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved.”
Other people named for their roles in the deliberations did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions.
Looking for an exit
In taking America to war, Trump offered little explanation, and the administration’s stated war aims have ranged from thwarting an imminent attack by Iran to crippling its nuclear program to replacing its government.
As he seeks an exit from an unpopular conflict, Trump is trying to juggle competing narratives that some critics say have complicated an already difficult situation, with Iran defiant despite the devastating US-Israeli air assault.
Top political aides and economic advisers, whose warnings before the war of the potential economic shock were largely ignored, appear to have played a major role in pushing Trump’s efforts this week to reassure skittish markets and contain rising oil and gas prices.
His public shift to downplaying the war’s impact, describing it as a “short-term excursion,” and his insistence that gas price hikes would be short-lived appeared aimed at calming fears of an open-ended conflict.
Some top aides have advised him to work toward a conclusion to the conflict that he can call a triumph, at least militarily, the sources said, even if much of the Iranian leadership survives, along with remnants of a nuclear program that the campaign was meant to target.
Wave after wave of US and Israeli air strikes have killed a number of top Iranian leaders among some 2,000 people overall – some as far away as Lebanon – devastated its ballistic missile arsenal, sunk much of its navy and degraded its ability to support armed proxies around the Middle East.
But the military achievements have been seriously undercut by Iran’s stepped-up attacks on oil tankers and transport facilities in the Gulf, driving up oil prices.
Trump has said he will decide when to end the campaign. He and his aides say they are far ahead of the four- to six-week timeframe Trump initially announced.
The shifting reasons for launching the conflict, which has spilled over into more than half a dozen other countries, have only made it more difficult to predict what comes next.
For their part, Iran’s rulers will claim victory, analysts say, for simply surviving the US-Israeli onslaught, especially after demonstrating their ability to fight back and inflict damage on Israel, the US and its allies.
Venezuela miscalculation
Critical to the war’s final trajectory will be the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s oil shipments, which normally traverses the narrow waterway, has come to a near-standstill. Iran in recent days has struck tankers in Iraqi waters and other ships near the strait, and the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep it shut.
If Iran’s stranglehold on the waterway pushes US gas prices high enough, that could increase political pressure on Trump to end the military campaign to help his Republican Party, which is defending narrow majorities in Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has recently refrained from pushing the idea that the war seeks to topple the government in Tehran. US intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is not at risk of collapse anytime soon, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
At least some of the confusion over the war’s trajectory appears rooted in the quick US military success in Venezuela.
Since the start of the war, some aides have struggled to convince Trump that the Iran campaign was unlikely to unfold in the same way as the January 3 Venezuela raid that captured President Nicolas Maduro, according to another source familiar with the administration’s thinking.
That operation opened the way for Trump to coerce former Maduro loyalists into giving him considerable sway over the country’s vast oil reserves – without requiring extended US military action.
Iran, by contrast, has proved a much tougher, better-armed foe with an entrenched clerical and security establishment.
Experts have rejected claims by Trump aides that Iran had been within weeks of being able to produce a nuclear weapon, despite the president’s insistence in June that US-Israeli bombing had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
Most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to have been buried by the June strikes, meaning the material potentially could be retrieved and purified to bomb grade. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons.
If the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs multiply, some analysts say it could erode backing from Trump’s political base. But despite criticism from some supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his “Make America Great Again” movement have so far largely stayed with him on Iran.
“The MAGA base is going to give the president wiggle room,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
