Moscow: The Russian presidential spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, stressed that his country does not use Tochka-U missiles like the one launched today against the train station in the city of Kramatorsk, in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Prensa Latina publishes.
The senior official urged the media to follow the statements of the Russian Defense Ministry, which excludes the use of this type of missile by its Armed Forces and warns about its use by Ukrainian troops.
?Our Armed Forces do not use this type of missile. Also, there were no combat missions in Kramatorsk and they were not scheduled for today?, Peskov said.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry described Kyiv’s statements blaming Moscow for the attack on the Kramatorsk train station as “provocative and absolutely false”.
He explained that the Tochka-U tactical missiles, whose remains were found near the impact site, and published by witnesses, are being used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
He recalled that on March 14, another similar missile from the Ukrainian forces fell in the center of the city of Donetsk, killing 17 people on the spot and wounding 36 others.
According to the deputy head of the DPR forces, Eduard Basurin, about 30 people died this Friday from the impact of the rocket at the Kramatorsk railway station.
?First the evacuation of these cities was announced: Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka, Artyomovsk, Slaviansk. People began to gather in places where you can get out quickly; that is, the train station. A shell fell. There are about 30 dead,” he told the Russian television channel Channel 1.
According to Basurin, the Ukrainian authorities did not hide that they were preparing new provocations. He narrated that from kyiv, immediately, they began to say that the missile was launched by Russia.
“But the means that people have, I mean the phones, the cameras, recorded that there were remains of a Tochka-U,” explained the DPR official.
He assured that the Tochka-U tactical missile “is not in service in our republics, I mean Donetsk and Lugansk, and the Army of the Russian Federation does not have it either.”
For the head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, the act constitutes ?another monstrous provocation, another war crime of the kyiv regime. Everything is clear to us, the kyiv regime does not consider these people as its own, it stops at nothing?, he told Russia 1 television.
The official warned that this bombing will not be the last provocation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, for which he called on the population “to prepare and counteract these war crimes, if possible?.