Ukraine and allies blame Russia for strike on station that killed over 50

Calcinated cars are pictured outside a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that was being used for civilian evacuations, after it was hit by a rocket attack killing at least 35 people, on April 8, 2022. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP) (Photo by FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraine and its allies blamed Russia for a missile attack that killed at least 52 people at a train station packed with women, children and the elderly fleeing the threat of a Russian offensive in the east.

As regional authorities scrambled to continue evacuating the vulnerable, European Union leaders visited Kyiv to offer President Volodymyr Zelenskyy support and expedite Ukraine's path toward EU membership.

Zelenskyy called the strike in Kramatorsk in the eastern region of Donetsk a deliberate attack on civilians. The town's mayor estimated about 4,000 people were gathered there at the time.

Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the station was hit by a Tochka U short-range ballistic missile containing cluster munitions, which explode in mid-air, spraying small lethal bomblets over a wider area.

Reuters was unable to verify what happened in Kramatorsk.

A man hugs a woman after Russian shelling at the railway station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Friday, April 8, 2022. Hours after warning that Ukraine's forces already had found worse scenes of brutality in a settlement north of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that ???thousands??? of people were at the station in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region, when it was hit by a missile. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)

Cluster munitions are banned under a 2008 convention. Russia has not signed it but has previously denied using such armaments in Ukraine.

In Washington, a senior defense official said the United States was "not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren't responsible", and believed Kyrylenko correctly identified the type of missile used in the attack.

The Russian defence ministry was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the missiles said to have struck the station were used only by Ukraine's military and that Russia's armed forces had no targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday.

Zelenskyy told Finland's parliament in a video address that no Ukrainian troops were at the station.

"We expect a firm global response to this war crime," he said later in a speech posted online.

Moscow has denied targeting civilians since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24 in what Russia calls a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour.

Kyiv and Western supporters call that a pretext for an unprovoked invasion that has displaced a quarter of the population and killed or injured thousands.

Ukrainian officials now expect an attempt by Russian forces to gain full control of Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk, both partly held by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

The Kremlin said on Friday the "special operation" could end in the "foreseeable future" with its aims being achieved through work by the Russian military and peace negotiators.

The White House said it would support attempts to investigate the attack in Kramatorsk.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it showed "the depths to which Putin's vaunted army has sunk."

At least 52 people have now died in the incident, Pavlo Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said in an online post.