April 15, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in southern Ukraine suggested that Russian missile attacks in the south since Thursday night were in retaliation for the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva.

Natalia Humeniuk said the attack had "affected not only [Russia's] ships, but also the enemy’s imperial ambitions."

She told a media briefing Friday that after the attack on the Moskva, "we all realize that we will not be forgiven."

Ukraine said two of its anti-ship missiles hit the Moskva, while the Kremlin has said only that a fire on board led to the eventual capsizing of the flagship of its Black Sea fleet.  

Humeniuk said that "when the ammunition detonated, that showed they had been loaded enough to keep destroying Ukraine. ...The impact led to the detonation of ammunition, they started struggling for survival." 

"We saw other ships try to help the cruiser, but even the nature was on Ukraine’s side, because the storm did not allow to carry out either a rescue operation or evacuate personnel," she continued.

Humeniuk referenced Russian missile attacks in the south since Thursday night after the Moskva attack.

A CNN team in Mykolaiv Friday heard multiple rounds of explosions in the morning between 10:20 a.m. and 12 p.m. local time. At least two people were killed in front of an Orthodox church in the city.

Humeniuk said that the situation in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions "is characterized by the fact that the enemy uses its brutal manners in the placing of equipment and units in-between the local civilians and the civilian infrastructure like schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and the yards of local residents."

"Then at night they disappear from these positions, leave the villages and shell them, while accusing the Ukrainian Armed Forces of shelling civilians," she said.

"Such actions are conducted in order to justify their status of liberators in the occupied territories," she added.

"We realize that attacks on us will increase, that the enemy will try to take revenge," Humeniuk said. "We are ready, we are resisting."

Note: This post contains graphic imagery.

At 10:30 a.m. local time last Friday, as many as 4,000 people in and around the train station in Kramatorsk were waiting to be evacuated when a missile exploded overhead, raining down chunks of metal. Shrapnel ripped through the crowd, which was largely composed of women, children and the elderly. The latest death toll is more than 50, with more than 100 injured.

When we visited the station 48 hours after the blast, we found the concourse still stained with blood, littered with the scattered possessions of the dead and wounded.

On one platform, we found a large pool of congealed blood in a shrapnel impact point with several false teeth nearby. Someone, probably an elderly person, must have been hit and killed there.

City officials believe Kramatorsk could be surrounded, besieged and pulverized by Russian forces if and when the much-anticipated offensive in the east gathers pace.

The mayor had been urging residents to leave, and prior to last Friday's strike around 8,000 people a day were boarding westbound trains. The evacuation effort had been publicly announced, with people from surrounding towns and villages urged to gather at the railway station in Kramatorsk, which was the major regional hub. There was nothing secret about it.

Russia has denied targeting the station, claiming the missile — a Tochka-U — is no longer used by Russian forces, and alleging that it was a Ukrainian missile that hit the station. Military analysts dismiss the claim.

Part of the missile crashed into a small park in front of the station. Someone, somewhere wrote on it in Russian "for the children."

While tagging and writing slogans on missiles, bombs and shells is a very old tradition, it is not for certain what the intended message was.

Read more about what CNN journalists have witnessed in Ukraine here:

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Russia has struck what it described as a "military facility" on the outskirts of Kyiv, amid fears that Russia could retaliate following the sinking of its Moskva warship in the Black Sea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the bravery of all Ukrainians who had defended the country in his latest video address, published on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Western officials have said there is no short-term end in sight to the war in Ukraine, adding that it could last through to the end of 2022.  

Here are the latest developments:

The Russian language website of the independent Moscow Times news outlet has been blocked by the Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, the outlet said in a statement Friday.

"Russia blocked The Moscow Times' Russian language service on Friday after it published what authorities call a false report on riot police officers refusing to fight in Ukraine," the outlet said in a statement on its English website, which hasn't been affected.

The Moscow Times' Russian language website remains accessible abroad via VPN, the outlet said.

"The prosecutor’s office has not yet notified The Moscow Times of its decision," The Moscow Times said.

"A tracking tool first detected access disruptions to the domain name themoscowtimes.com/ru from within Russia earlier in the day," it said.

The Moscow Times said its Russian website was among dozens of domestic and foreign websites to have been blocked since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Some context: In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of being "frightened" by journalists "who can tell the truth" after the Kremlin attempted to prevent Russians seeing an interview he gave about the war in Ukraine.

"Well, if there's such reaction — then we are doing everything right. [It] means they are nervous," added Zelensky.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN at the time that Russia was not afraid, saying there were "laws in ​place, and it is very important not to publish information that would amount to a violation of these laws."

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At least two people were killed in multiple attacks on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, a regional military official told CNN. 

Dmytro Pletenchuk, the Mykolaiv military administration press officer, said an unspecified number of people were also injured in the shelling. 

A CNN team heard multiple rounds of explosions in the morning between 10:20 a.m. and 12 p.m. local time. The two people were killed in front of an Orthodox church, and the CNN team witnessed the clean-up of blood and debris. Sirens continued to sound in the city. 

Hanna Zamazeeva, the head of the Mykolaiv regional council, said in a statement on Telegram that Russian forces were hitting residential quarters of Mykolaiv. 

"There are no military facilities there!" she said. "PEACEFUL residents come under fire!"

Zamazeeva said one of the districts of the city was hit by fire from a multiple rocket launcher and warned residents to remain in shelters.

Seven people were killed when Russian forces allegedly opened fire Thursday on two evacuation buses, according to preliminary information, said the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office.

Another 27 people were wounded as the buses travelled near the village of Borova, close to the contested city of Izium, the office added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the bravery of all Ukrainians who had defended the country in his latest video address, published Thursday -- the 50th day of the Russian invasion.

Zelensky then made an apparent reference to the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, which sank off the coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea on Thursday.

Russia's Defense Ministry said the ship sank as a result of an explosion after a fire of unknown origin that detonated the ship's stored ammunition. Ukraine says it hit the Moskva with anti-ship cruise missiles and that these missiles sparked the fire that detonated the ammunition.

Moskva was one of the ships involved in the famous exchange at Snake Island in February, which saw Ukrainian soldiers on the tiny Black Sea island react with defiant words when threatened with bombing by approaching Russians.

According to a purported audio exchange, one of the Ukrainian troops had responded to a warning from an approaching Russian vessel to lay down their weapons or face bombing by saying, "Russian warship, go f*** yourself."

In his address, Zelensky added that by destroying civilian infrastructure, Russia had shown "how absurd" the invasion is, because along with destroying Ukrainian cities it is also destroying Russia's standing in the world.

Ukrainian military intelligence issued a statement Thursday naming the Russian general leading operations in Ukraine and alleging "war crimes" in the siege of the port city of Mariupol.

Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia's Southern Military District, was recently named as Russia's overall commander of the military campaign in Ukraine, according to a US official and a European official.

In its statement, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said Dvornikov was appointed commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine on April 8.

The Ukrainian statement added that "his subordinate units of the armed forces and troops of the National Guard of Russia are involved in war crimes against the civilian population of Mariupol," the port city that has been devastated by weeks of Russian bombardment.

Some background: Military analysts say the naming of a commander to lead Russian President Vladimir Putin's war signals an intent to remedy initial Russian battlefield setbacks and a lack of coordination among forces. Russian and Ukrainian troops continue to battle for control of Mariupol.

The alleged atrocities carried out by Russian forces following their retreat from several towns near Kyiv in recent weeks have drawn international outrage.

After images of at least 20 bodies strewn across the street in Bucha, Ukraine, emerged earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for an end to Russian "war crimes."

On Monday, the prosecutor general of Ukraine said Monday that her office was investigating 5,800 cases of Russian war crimes, with "more and more" proceedings every day.

And on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden described the atrocities in Ukraine as "genocide" for the first time, adding that "it's become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian.”

CNN's Nathan Hodge, Tara John, Jonny Hallam and Paul LeBlanc contributed reporting to this post.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told European allies that the United States believes the Russian war in Ukraine could last through the end of 2022, two European officials told CNN, as US and European officials have increasingly assessed that there is no short-term end in sight to the conflict.

Many of the officials who spoke with CNN stressed that it is hard to predict exactly how long the war could go on, but several officials said that there are no indications that Russian President Vladimir Putin's ultimate goals have changed, and it is unlikely he will pursue diplomatic negotiations unless faced with military defeat.

The thinking that this could be a long-term conflict represents a marked shift from the early days of the war, when Russia was expected to quickly take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and underscores Moscow's failures on the battlefield.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Thursday that the fighting will go on "for months or even longer," while two other European officials said they believe fighting in eastern Ukraine could last for four to six months and then result in a stalemate.

Blinken, a senior State Department official said, "has discussed with his counterparts our concern that the conflict could be protracted, but all of his engagements have revolved around how best to bring it to a halt as quickly as possible."

Doubling down on weapons support: UK Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said this week that the launch of the new Russian fighting in the Donbas could be weeks away, telling reporters that "there is a window of opportunity and I think this is why the nature of our support is so important, that we are providing weapons, the equipment that Ukrainians need to do the job they need to do."

US officials cast the additional military support to Ukraine this week as a continuation, but do say that part of what has prompted the doubling down -- and additional support -- is the Ukrainians' battlefield efforts.

Cost of inaction: Officials also acknowledge that the public may grow weary of continued support for Ukraine, and will have to be reminded that inaction would be even more costly.

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