The death toll has risen after an Independence Day attack on a train station in east Ukraine. Elsewhere, $1 billion of goods are still being shipped from Russia to the US each month despite sanctions. Follow DW for more.

As Ukraine marked its 31st Independence Day from the former Soviet Union under heavy Russian shelling, a missile attack on a rail station killed 25 people, setting a passenger train on fire.

Missiles also struck north of Kyiv, the capital.

Ukraine’s Independence Day also coincided with the six-month anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

In video remarks to the UN Security Council Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said rockets hit a train in the small town of Chaplyne, roughly 145 kilometers (90 miles) west of Russian-occupied Donetsk in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.

His aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko later said Chaplyne had been shelled twice by Russian forces. In the first missile strike, a boy was struck dead in his home and 21 people were later killed as rockets hit the train station where five train cars caught fire.

Five of the dead were recovered from one of the railway cars, while search and rescue operations were still taking place, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. Authorities raised the casualty count by morning as more of the dead were recovered from the blasts’ locations.

More than 50 were injured in the blasts.

The Russian defense ministry said Thursday it had bombed the station, but claimed Ukrainian soldiers were the target.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the attack on Twitter, writing, “Russia’s missile strike on a train station full of civilians in Ukraine fits a pattern of atrocities. We will continue, together with partners from around the world, to stand with Ukraine and seek accountability for Russian officials.”

North of Kyiv, the Vyshgorod region was hit six times, though no one was killed, according to regional official Oleksiy Kuleba.

Source: National News Agency