The Russian general has been identified who ordered and led the deadly railway station strike in Ukraine's Kramatorsk on Friday that killed over 50 civilians including five children. Captain General Aleksandr Dvornikov, a Russian commander, who led the damage in Syria, is believed to have ordered the deadly air strike on the railway station.
Dvornikov's actions that saw dozens getting killed on Friday is now being branded as "crime against humanity" within the international community. This comes as both Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of carrying out the attack, with Russia claiming that it didn't conduct the air strike and the incident is "untrue."
Ruthless Killer
According to western officials General Dvornikov was ordered by the Kremlin to seize the entirety of the Donbas, as the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk are known. Following this, he ordered the airstrike that killed 50 civilians including five children.
Graphic photos from the site of the devastation on Friday show bodies of victims sprawled across the floor, laying among luggage and children's prams outside the city's busiest station. Some of the bodies had already been placed in green body bags, while other photographs showed smoke emerging from the structure as firefighters arrived.
The enormous Tochka-U missile's debris was left on the grass outside the station, with white Russian letters painted down the side of its case saying "For (our) Children," a retribution message from the alleged pro-Moscow forces who launched it.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said on Telegram: "Fifty dead, five of them children. This is the death toll at this hour after the strike by Russian occupational forces on the train station in Kramatorsk.
On Friday night, Dvornikov's was identified as the man behind ordering the deadly airstrike. He is also believed to be the same commander who oversaw the carnage in Syria. He has now been vested with the responsibility of seizing Donbas.
However, officials say that Dvornokov might struggle to make Vladimir Putin happy. "Unless the Russian Army becomes a lot more effective it is difficult to see how it succeeds," one said.
Crime Against Humanity
General Dvornikov's achievements and tactical preferences have been put into a database by NATO leaders in a bid to predict his next movements in the coming weeks.
According to military analysts, the missile used in Friday's attack was a Soviet-era Tochka U missile with a range of 200 to 500 feet. The station is located in the heart of Kramatorsk, which has a population of around 150,000 people.
Russian and Ukrainian missiles are still in service, and the evacuations would have been known. According to Ukraine, the blast injured roughly 300 people.
This comes as France declared the Russian missile strikes a "crime against humanity" in yet another atrocity that drew worldwide outrage.
President Joe Biden accused Russian aggressor Vladimir Putin of committing a "horrific atrocity" against civilians fleeing Moscow's bombings at Kramatorsk railway station in the east, where Kremlin forces are regrouping to launch a massive offensive.
Meanwhile, both Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for the incident, with Russia's defense ministry calling its involvement "absolutely untrue" while Russia's state media attempted to transfer the blame to Ukrainian troops.
Donetsk separatist commander Eduard Basurin said the attack on the station was a Ukrainian 'provocation' against Russia, according to TASS, Russia's state-run news agency.
According to RIA, Moscow stated the missile was of a type solely employed by the Ukrainian military and was similar to one that hit the heart of Donetsk on March 14, killing 17 people. According to experts, images from the site show it was painted green, but Ukrainian ones are painted grey.
At the time the city's railway station was hit by at least two rockets, at least 4,000 people were there, according to Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksander Honcharenko. The majority were women, the elderly, and children, he added, who were ready to flee to safer areas as Russia concentrates its forces in eastern Ukraine.
