China continued its attempts to thread the needle on its response to Russia’s war in Ukraine on Monday, as a top diplomat expressed sorrow for the killing of more than 50 civilians in a missile strike on a train station last week while declining to apportion blame for the attack. “China laments the killing and injuring of dozens of civilians, including women and children, caused by the Kramatorsk train station attack,” Dai Bing, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said during a UN Security Council session. “The relevant circumstances and specific causes of the incident must be established, and any accusations should be based on facts,” said Dai, speaking during the body’s first meeting since Friday’s attack in eastern Ukraine. Fifty-seven people were killed and 109 were injured, according to Ukrainian officials. Some 4,000 civilians had gathered at the station amid fears of intensifying fighting in the region. Fragments of a projectile found at the site of the attack identified it as a Soviet-designed Tochka-U missile, while witness reports of multiple explosions at the site raised fears that the missile had been fitted with a cluster munitions warhead. Russian officials, blaming Ukraine for the attack, said that Russia no longer uses the Tochka-U missile. But unverified footage circulated on social media by Belarusian observers appeared to show Tochka-U missile systems being transported within Belarus, Russia’s military ally in the war. “I will not develop the false theory that Russia does not possess Tochka-U, including because Russia deployed many Tochka-U’s in the territory of Belarus,” said Ukraine’s envoy to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya. Kyslytsya also highlighted short-lived reports from pro-Kremlin news outlets soon after Friday’s attack, which had alleged a successful strike against Ukrainian troops gathered at the Kramatorsk train station. The reports were “deleted immediately after the information on the real outcomes of the strike appeared”, he said. UN General Assembly suspends Russia from top human rights body over Ukraine Ukraine’s allies on the Security Council were similarly unconvinced by Moscow’s claims during Monday’s meeting, which was convened to address the rising humanitarian cost of Russia’s war, particularly for women and children. “We were told ‘it’s not Russia,’” said Albania’s UN representative, Ferit Hoxha. “Haven’t we enough of this ridiculous pattern, when Russia commits a crime and attributes it to someone else?” The US officially determined last month that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, and the White House suggested on Friday that the Kramatorsk attack could meet that threshold, too. Beijing remains an outlier in the Security Council in its refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion, and on Thursday voted against a successful measure in the UN General Assembly to oust Moscow from the UN Human Rights Council. That vote, and Dai’s comments on Monday, continued the Chinese government’s attempted balancing act on the war in Ukraine – condemning the violence in vague terms while offering no direct criticism of Moscow’s actions. After the bodies of civilians – some with their hands bound – were discovered this month in a city from which Russian troops had recently departed, China called reports of the killings “deeply disturbing” while simultaneously warning against “groundless accusations”. US President Joe Biden’s administration is divided as to whether it can ever persuade China to take a stand against the war and convince Moscow to de-escalate. On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that US officials would continue to speak with their Chinese counterparts about Beijing’s position, urging it to abide by sanctions and “not provide material support to Russia”.