Today supposedly two rockets hit the Kramatorsk rail station, killed 39 refugee civilians and wounded 87 more. The casualties appear to be real. In the past I’ve had serious doubts about the photos and claims in this war. But the pictures of this incident lead me to believe we are looking at a murderous fabrication.

The first picture in the Guardian this morning (8192 credited to Fadel Senna AFP/Getty) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/08/kramatorsk-train-station-ukraine-russia-rockets shows three-or-four burned cars in front of the station and no damage to the station at all, none of the usual “peppered with shrapnel” marks on the wall or puncture damage on the cars. From the article, this was supposedly an air burst of shrapnel (thus no impact crater) but there are none of the artifacts of shrapnel.

The second picture, the rear half of the rocket showing the rocket motor section with “for our children” painted on it, lying in front of the station (also labeled 8192 and from Fadel Senna), is unusual to say the least. It is the rear 10 feet of a rocket which according to the story is a Tochka-U. It is laying in the grass. According to Wikipedia, the Tochka-U rocket is a ballistic missile, 21 feet long and 2 feet wide, that weighs 4,000 lbs and travels at mach 5 (3,000 mph). It has a circular probable error of 150 meters (meaning that half of them hit within 150 meters of the target). Even though it would have been traveling at 3,000 mph and heading down at a very steep angle, the rocket shown is almost undamaged, barely disturbed the grass and left no impact crater. We’ve all seen pictures of 80 mph car wrecks and pictures of civilian airliners that hit the ground at 500 mph and leave a crater. Imagine what 4,000 lbs coming almost straight down and hitting the ground at 3,000 mph looks like?

A third image credited to “Anadolu Agency Getty” at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/apr/08/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-zelenskiy-says-borodyanka-much-worse-than-bucha-johnson-to-meet-scholz-live shows about 20 pieces of luggage 50 yards down the platform from the station. Clear blood stains on the ground. But not one bit of shrapnel damage to ANY luggage. No damage to the luggage at all and no marks or indications of damage to the brick pavement. There are blood stains next to the only piece of luggage that is knocked over (the pink one in the center) but there is simply no actual damage to anything in the area. And no crater.

The idea that two relatively inaccurate, 4,000 lbs missiles traveling at 3,000 mph would happen to hit two places where groups of innocent refugees are on a rail platform, and that the two 100 lb fragmentation air burst magically leave no marks on the walls, don’t puncture the sheet metal on cars, don’t damage the fiberglass luggage on the ground next to the blood, and barely dent the rocket body is well beyond unlikely.

This article also has a fourth image (5586) which shows the rocket (labeled in the photo as a “Tochka-U”) from the rear next to three small trees. It lies at about a 30-45 degree angle to the front of the station on Railroad Avenue, again with no damage to the ground. Based on the angle and the Google earth picture which shows the three trees and the white roofed station with two wings at: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kramatorsk,+Donetsk+Oblast,+Ukraine/@48.7256885,37.5394139,371m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x40df97a4c0ea9b9b:0x6cfddec1592678ec!8m2!3d48.738967!4d37.58435 )

the missile, if it actually flew in from the shown direction, came from about 260 degrees- slightly south of due west. This isn’t Russian-controlled territory. Personally, from the lack of an impact crater, I think it was just placed on the ground.

But there are dead and that is real blood. I have the sickening feeling that standard, non-shrapnel, explosives- terrorist bombs were set off in the crowds on the train platform. Then a missile body was dropped on the ground nearby and the photographers were called in. If there are folks on Naked Capitalism with real, professional photo-interpreting experience, please chime-in.

This is truly an atrocity… but by who?