On 8 April 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) fired a Tochka U missile at the Kramatorsk railway station, where a large number of civilians were seeking to evacuate the town, killing more than 30 people and injuring 100. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine and the West are trying to blame Russia for this carnage. But there is a big problem: Russia has not used Tochka U missiles for several years.
On 8 April, at around 10.30 a.m. local time, as the inhabitants of Kramatorsk lined up at the railway station to evacuate the town before it was completely surrounded, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired a Tochka U cluster munition at the area, causing a bloodbath: more than 30 dead and more than 100 injured.
Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainian authorities tried to blame Russia, initially claiming that it was an Iskander missile.
Problem: the photos taken in front of the Kramatorsk train station by local residents and immediately published leave no doubt that this is absolutely not an Iskander missile, but a Tochka U cluster munition, the same type as the one fired by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the centre of Donetsk on 14 March 2022.
However, Russia has not used Tochka U missiles for three years, as they have been replaced by Iskander missiles. The only countries that still use Tochka U are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Syria and... Ukraine!
Moreover, in the annual reference book "The Military Balance" of 2020, it is very clear that there are no more Tochka U in the Russian military arsenal.
Some people then pulled out videos of equipment movements in preparation for the 2022 joint Russian-Belarusian exercises, and articles covering those same exercises, to claim that Russia does have Tochka U since there were some in those exercises.
Except that the missile systems used in the exercises were Belarusian, and therefore remained in Belarus. And in these exercises the letters Z and V were used to mark the different equipment.
Furthermore, in the video of the equipment transport, no missile can be seen on the vehicle, indicating that it may not even be a Tochka U, but surely 1L268 Credo-1S radar systems with the same chassis as the Tochka U (and the OSA air defence system for that matter) and with the antenna removed for transport.
Рашисты врут что не используют "Точка-У", правда многочисленные видео говорят об обратном. pic.twitter.com/us10oZQC4o
— ІнфоВійська України/Ukraine (@i_army_org) April 8, 2022
The Credo-1C radar system uses the same chassis as the Tochka-U pic.twitter.com/pY2BBs16l4
— Алексей Рунасов (@nerusanov) April 8, 2022
And if you look at the orientation of the missile when it fell to the ground, its head is to the northeast and its tail is to the southwest, indicating that the missile was fired from that direction. This corresponds to the direction of Dobropolie, which the Russian Ministry of Defense has indicated as the location from which the Tochka U missile was fired at Kramatorsk by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But this area is under Ukrainian control! In that direction there are no Russian troops within 120 km (range of the Tochka-U).
Another small detail attracts attention: the missile says "for children". But those who usually write such horrors on ammunition are the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as can be seen in this photo of a Ukrainian soldier of the Azov regiment next to shells on which is written "The best for children"! This photo was taken more than six years ago!
Finally, if we look at who benefits from such a massacre, it is clearly not Russia. If Moscow didn't care about civilians, it would have bombed the Ukraine in a carpet-bombing fashion and the military operation would have been over long ago. As the DPR and Chechen soldiers in Mariupol told us, it is the use of civilians as human shields that is slowing down their progress! The interest of Russia and the DPR is that the civilians evacuate! Moreover, the DPR has called on the civilians of Slaviansk and Kramatorsk to evacuate before the encirclement is complete in order to avoid being used as human shields by Ukrainian soldiers.
The only party to the conflict that benefits from this massacre is Ukraine, which is trying to prevent the evacuation of the inhabitants of Kramatorsk by scaring them. Because the fewer human shields there are in Kramatorsk, the sooner the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be defeated! And the more the Western media and governments turn a blind eye to the war crimes committed by Kiev, and falsely attribute them to Russia, the more these bloody provocations will increase, as Ukraine enjoys total impunity. I remind these people that this is nothing less than complicity in war crimes...