Chinese UN representative ‘laments’ deaths in Ukraine missile attack but doesn’t blame Russia
- After Friday’s carnage at a train station in eastern Ukraine, a UN Security Council meeting was convened to address the war’s rising humanitarian toll
- ‘Haven’t we enough of this ridiculous pattern, when Russia commits a crime and attributes it to someone else?’ asks Albania’s UN ambassador
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.
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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.