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Ukrainian Tochka-U Missile Killed Dozens At Kramatorsk Train Station
The current top headline of the New York Times is:
Live Updates: Russia Strikes Train Station, Ukraine Says, as Thousands Flee From East
“Dozens” were feared dead and injured, a local official said, after a missile strike in Kramatorsk, which had been a main point of evacuation for people trying to leave eastern Ukraine.
CNN quotes an Ukrainian military official who described it as an Iskander missile strike:
Two missiles struck the station, according to the head of Ukraine's national rail system, Oleksandr Kamyshin. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of Donetsk regional military administration, said the Russian military used Iskander short-range ballistic missiles.
A pro-Ukrainian twitter account also describes this as a result of the missile attack (the time stamp is UTC+2):
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The same account describes this as the remains of the booster section of the missile that hit the train station:
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The picture in full size:
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Another view of the debris from a different account:
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A check with Tineye proves that the pictures above have not be published earlier. They are new.
The booster section of a missile typically departs from the war head in mid-flight and lands separately. However, the booster section shown in the above pictures is from a Tochka-U missile.
Here are pictures from GlobalSecurity.org of the SS-21 SCARAB (9K79 Tochka) system. The booster section is the aft half to the right:
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When unfolded the fins and the grid stabilizers are clearly identifiable.
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Russia, unlike the Ukraine, is no longer using Tochka-U missiles. They have been replaced by Iskandar missile systems. As the not recently edited Wikipedia entry about Tochka operators says:
Russia – 220 launchers. Missile systems have been upgraded since 2004 (replacing the onboard automated control systems) and are scheduled to be replaced by the 9K720 Iskander missiles by 2020
In a March 16 press release Russia denied that its forces still use Tochka-U missiles:
UNITED NATIONS, March 16. /TASS/. Tochka-U tactical missiles are not in service in Russian Armed Forces, Russian mission to the UN said in its letter to the UN Security Council and General Assembly.
"Given the proven record of the Kiev regime promoting false allegations and fake evidence, it should be noted that Tochka-U tactical missiles are not in service in the Russian Armed Forces," the letter says.
Ukraine, which has retained some 90 launcher systems for Tochka-U missiles from Soviet times, has recently fired several of these against Russian and Donbas forces.
I have failed to find any recent reports of the use of Tochka missiles by Russian forces.
This clipping from the most recent Southfront map shows Kramatorsk right in the middle and not immediately near the frontline.
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A current situation report says that Russia has recently systematically disabled train tracks along the Ukrainian supply lines to the Donbas front:
As the big showdown in Donbass looms, a lot of forces are pouring in on both sides. Russia has shifted strategies and is now striking railway stations and reinforcement hubs / corridors, as many have hoped it would do. Overnight there were several reports of important railway hubs being hit by missiles. One near Zhytomir, which is possibly the single most important reinforcement hub to the frontlines in all of western Ukraine. Reinforcements being sent to frontlines were reportedly destroyed in the strike, though there’s no visual confirmation. And another in Kharkov region – just south, in Lozovaya – which evoked a video message plea from the Kharkov mayor who said railways were hit, oil has run out, but pleaded for people not to flee (presumably because the militants who control him need citizens to use as hostages / human shields just like in Mariupol).
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As can be seen on this map, the Lozovaya junction is a critical resupply / reinforcement route for the Ukrop Donbass cauldron and specifically their stronghold of Kramatorsk, which had been the central headquarters of the entire JFO for some time. And other reports said a railway bridge was hit leading to that junction as well.
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Of note is that so far all Russian attacks on train junctions were reported to have happened at night time.
As Russia has already interrupted the train lines west of Kramatorsk, and thereby stopped resupplies to it, it has no need to attack Kramatorsk station at all.
It is therefore almost assured that it was a Ukrainian missile that today hit Kramatorsk station. It was either aimed badly, went off course or was intentionally aimed at it for propaganda purposes. (The 'for the children' marking in Russian on the booster section may point to the later cause.)
We have no further information for us to decide which is the case.
Posted by: Arne Hartmann | Apr 8 2022 12:56 utc | 46
“So my family knows something about being deceived by propaganda to fight for the “greatness” of Germany”
My experience exactly. One of my grandfathers was deployed in greece, as a paratrooper supposedly, we never learned details though, he took the story to his grave (in the 80ies). But we know today what happened there and who did it. The other was a simple infantrist on the eastern front, somewhere near Stalingrad, and had the incredible luck that his leg got shot off, so he was sent back. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t exist today. That occured to me when I was a child – if he would have been killed, I would never have been born. Ever since, in consequence, if somebody gets killed, I don’t see only one victim. I see a potential of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of victims – future offspring that have been denied the opportunity of life because one asshole decided to just snuff out another human being. Therefore the asshole is not just a murderer, but a mass murderer in any case.
Also the sight of my grandfathers stump creeped me out as a kid, I couldn’t even imagine to live like that, still can’t. Those things formed my view on violence and war, plus the fact that I was born in Eastern Germany where, I am convinced but don’t have proof, a majority of people don’t buy into the hate-mongering against Russia. We were occupied by Russia, true. But they never behaved like oppressing occupying forces of the likes we’ve seen anywhere else in the world in the last 70 years, except for that incident in 1953. And btw they would have had any right to do so. I cannot repeat it often enough: Germans killed more than 26 million Russians. A number so vast it’s impossible to imagine. I thought of a depiction though: if all those bodies would have been laid out head to toe in a row, they would have circled the earth entirely. Let that sink in.
Another thing: as far as I know, Eastern Germany paid all the war reparations to Russia -Western Germany never bothered to partake. And after 1949, most of the higher ranking ex-Wehrmacht, ex-NSDAP, ex-SS, ex-Gestapo who survived lived in Western Germany, many of them became very successful in civilian jobs, as politicians, lawmakers, military and intelligence agents. In Eastern Germany the losers of the war, the common people, the foot soldiers, remained. So I strongly suspect that people of my age in west and east heard very different stories about the war. Offspring of ex-nazis still harbour the hate against Russia because they heard stories of the evil barbarians since they were born (besides the all-encumbering anti-communist propaganda of the west in the post-war decades). A great example, obviously, are Baerbock (industry offspring) and von der Leyen (nazi ancestors). Offspring of the foot soldiers heard stories of humiliation and regret. And kept those in mind, and often or even mostly accepted their moral obligations.
That being said, about 20 years ago, while or shortly after the Balkan war, I observed that a lot of people once again started to see war as a necessary evil, and considered it to be not all that bad, if just the goal was a “good” one. At that time I was studying a bit of art history and had to discover that before world war 1 (ONE!) a huge number of artists, intellectuals and other kinda progressive people in Germany were really enthusiastic about a new war, because they saw it as a neccesary cleansing of the old structures. The destruction of the old to be able to build something new upon. They got sobered up quickly after the first few millions died horrible deaths and some more millions got crippled for life. One of the reasons back then: they had a romantic image of war where soldiers shoot with muskets and ride on horses swinging their sabers, because their hasn’t been a significant war between 1875 and 1915. 40 years back then meant a lifetime. The evil of war, the dehumanizing, the blood, the pain, the grief – all had been forgotten, no-one had experienced it, few have been told stories by eye-witnesses. And I thought – 20 years ago – “I’m pretty sure once the last survivors and eye-witnesses of world war 2 have died, and no-one can tell the story of war from experience anymore, the same shit will happen again”. And here we are.
Posted by: xototox | Apr 8 2022 19:46 utc | 210
Olivier | Apr 8 2022 20:49 utc | 238
I will add to your message in relation to the USSR and a little to the present. Trotsky and his globalist masters (Jewish elites, deep state) viewed Russia after its takeover in 1917 as a springboard for a “permanent world revolution”. But Stalin, relying on pro-nationalist revolutionaries who did not want to fight for world globalists, put forward the thesis in 1925 about “building socialism in a single country.” After an internal party struggle, Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in 1929, and Stalin set out to build a strong national state. Naturally, the globalists did not like this idea. Stalin had to be punished for his apostasy, and in 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany, which was eventually used by the globalists as a battering ram against the USSR. The idea was to bleed the USSR and Germany and make them easy prey for the globalists. Stalin, realizing this, and preparing for a future war in 1937-1938, carried out a purge of Trotskyist elements in the party and the army (the famous repressions). Including thanks to these repressions, the USSR withstood Hitler’s blow in 1941 and, as a result, in 1945 the USSR won, while not allowing the globalists to dictate the conditions to the USSR (the plan “Unthinkable” attack on the USSR immediately after the war and blackmail with an atomic bomb). But the globalists in 1953 liquidate Stalin with the hands of the crypto-Trotskyists who remained in the country’s leadership. Khrushchev and all subsequent Soviet leaders acted under the control of the globalists, while weakening the US and the USSR in the Cold War. In 1991, the USSR was dismantled. Now is the time to dismantle the US and Europe. But fortunately for us, in 2000, the globalists missed Putin’s coming to power in Russia, who, like Stalin in his time, at first carefully concealed his pro-national convictions. His Munich speech in 2008 and the Russian renaissance ran counter to the plans of the globalists, whose battering ram is the Trotskyist neocons. Georgia attacked South Ossetia in 2008, the Arab Spring, Russia came to the aid of Syria, for which it received a coup in Ukraine in 2014 in response. In 2013, Xi Jingping, a representative of pro-army circles, came to power in China. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was an associate of the Stalinist Gao Gang. With his arrival, China began to pursue a more pro-national policy, and today we see an alliance between Russia and China against the globalist neocons-Trotskyists. Today’s war in Ukraine is another act of confrontation between globalists and nation-states. If Russia had not entered Ukraine on February 24, Ukraine would have attacked Donbass in March. The 60,000th group of Ukrainian troops, located today in the east of Ukraine, did not come there to pick flowers. In 1941, we allowed the globalists in the form of Hitler to strike first. Not today.
Posted by: Nebo Sinee | Apr 8 2022 22:09 utc | 258
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