By ADAM SCHRECK and CARA AN­NA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Civil­ian evac­u­a­tions moved for­ward in patch­es of bat­tle-scarred east­ern Ukraine on Sat­ur­day, a day af­ter a mis­sile strike killed at least 52 peo­ple and wound­ed more than 100 at a train sta­tion where thou­sands clam­ored to leave be­fore an ex­pect­ed Russ­ian on­slaught.

In the wake of the at­tack in Kram­a­torsk, sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean lead­ers made ef­forts to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ukraine, with the Aus­tri­an chan­cel­lor and British prime min­is­ter vis­it­ing Kyiv — the cap­i­tal city that Rus­sia failed to cap­ture and where troops re­treat­ed days ago. U.K. Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son met with Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, where John­son’s of­fice said they dis­cussed Britain’s “long-term sup­port.”

Ze­len­skyy not­ed the in­creased sup­port in an As­so­ci­at­ed Press in­ter­view, but ex­pressed frus­tra­tion when asked if weapons and oth­er equip­ment Ukraine has re­ceived from the West is suf­fi­cient to shift the war’s out­come.

“Not yet,” he said, switch­ing to Eng­lish for em­pha­sis. “Of course it’s not enough.”

More than six weeks af­ter Rus­sia first in­vad­ed Ukraine, it has pulled its troops from the north­ern part of the coun­try, around Kyiv, and re­fo­cused on the Don­bas re­gion in the east. West­ern mil­i­tary an­a­lysts said an arc of ter­ri­to­ry in east­ern Ukraine was un­der Russ­ian con­trol, from Kharkiv — Ukraine’s sec­ond-largest city — in the north to Kher­son in the south. But Ukrain­ian coun­ter­at­tacks are threat­en­ing Russ­ian con­trol of Kher­son, ac­cord­ing to the West­ern as­sess­ments, and Ukrain­ian forces are re­pelling Russ­ian as­saults else­where in the Don­bas re­gion in the south­east.

Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties have called on civil­ians to get out ahead of an im­mi­nent, stepped-up of­fen­sive by Russ­ian forces in the east. With trains not run­ning out of Kram­a­torsk on Sat­ur­day, pan­icked res­i­dents board­ed bus­es or looked for oth­er ways to leave, fear­ing the kind of un­re­lent­ing as­saults and oc­cu­pa­tions by Russ­ian in­vaders that de­liv­ered food short­ages, de­mol­ished build­ings and death to oth­er cities else­where in Ukraine.

“It was ter­ri­fy­ing. The hor­ror, the hor­ror,” one res­i­dent told British broad­cast­er Sky, re­call­ing Fri­day’s at­tack on the train sta­tion. “Heav­en for­bid, to live through this again. No, I don’t want to.”

Ukraine’s state rail­way com­pa­ny said in a state­ment that res­i­dents of Kram­a­torsk and oth­er parts of the coun­try’s con­test­ed Don­bas re­gion could flee through oth­er train sta­tions. Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Iry­na Vereshchuk said 10 evac­u­a­tion cor­ri­dors were planned for Sat­ur­day.

Ze­len­skyy called the train sta­tion at­tack the lat­est ex­am­ple of war crimes by Russ­ian forces and said it should mo­ti­vate the West to do more to help his coun­try de­fend it­self.

Rus­sia de­nied it was re­spon­si­ble and ac­cused Ukraine’s mil­i­tary of fir­ing on the sta­tion to turn blame for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties on Moscow. A Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry spokesman de­tailed the mis­sile’s tra­jec­to­ry and Ukrain­ian troop po­si­tions to bol­ster the ar­gu­ment.

West­ern ex­perts and Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties in­sist­ed that Rus­sia launched the weapon. Rem­nants of the rock­et had the words “For the chil­dren” in Russ­ian paint­ed on it. The phras­ing seemed to sug­gest the mis­sile was sent to avenge the loss or sub­ju­ga­tion of chil­dren, al­though its ex­act mean­ing re­mained un­clear.

West­ern ex­perts dis­missed Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov’s as­ser­tion that Russ­ian forces “do not use” Tochka-U mis­siles, the type that hit the train sta­tion, which is in Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry in the Don­bas.

The at­tack came as Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties worked to iden­ti­fy vic­tims and doc­u­ment pos­si­ble war crimes by Russ­ian sol­diers in north­ern Ukraine. The may­or of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graph­ic ev­i­dence of civil­ian slay­ings emerged af­ter the Rus­sians with­drew, said search teams were still find­ing bod­ies of peo­ple shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.

Work­ers un­earthed the 67 bod­ies Fri­day from a mass grave near a church, ac­cord­ing to Ukraine’s pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al. Rus­sia has false­ly claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties and West­ern of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused Russ­ian forces of com­mit­ting atroc­i­ties in the war that be­gan with Rus­sia’s Feb. 24 in­va­sion. A to­tal of 176 chil­dren have been killed, while 324 more have been wound­ed, the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice said Sat­ur­day.

Speak­ing to AP in­side the heav­i­ly guard­ed pres­i­den­tial of­fice com­plex in Kyiv, Ze­len­skyy said he is com­mit­ted to ne­go­ti­at­ing a diplo­mat­ic end to the war even though Rus­sia has “tor­tured” Ukraine. He al­so ac­knowl­edged that peace like­ly will not come quick­ly. Talks so far have not in­clud­ed Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin or oth­er top of­fi­cials.

“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is noth­ing and no peo­ple. That’s why it is im­por­tant to stop this war,” he said.

Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties have said they ex­pect to find more mass killings once they reach the south­ern port city of Mar­i­upol, which is al­so in the Don­bas and has been sub­ject­ed to a month­long block­ade and in­tense fight­ing.

As jour­nal­ists who had been large­ly ab­sent from the city be­gan to trick­le back in, new im­ages emerged of the dev­as­ta­tion from an airstrike on a the­atre last month that re­port­ed­ly killed hun­dreds of civil­ians seek­ing shel­ter.

Mil­i­tary an­a­lysts had pre­dict­ed for weeks that Rus­sia would suc­ceed in tak­ing Mar­i­upol but said Ukrain­ian de­fend­ers were still putting up a fight. The city’s lo­ca­tion on the Sea of Azov is crit­i­cal to es­tab­lish­ing a land bridge from the Crimean Penin­su­la, which Rus­sia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.

Many civil­ians now try­ing to evac­u­ate are ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing in or near a war zone be­cause Moscow-backed rebels have been fight­ing Ukrain­ian forces since 2014 in the Don­bas, a most­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing, in­dus­tri­al re­gion.

Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have plead­ed with West­ern pow­ers al­most dai­ly to send more arms, and to fur­ther pun­ish Rus­sia with sanc­tions, in­clud­ing the ex­clu­sion of Russ­ian banks from the glob­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem and a to­tal Eu­ro­pean Union em­bar­go on Russ­ian gas and oil.

The deaths of civil­ians at the train sta­tion brought re­newed ex­pres­sions of out­rage from West­ern lead­ers and pledges that Rus­sia would face fur­ther reprisals. On Sat­ur­day, Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry tried to counter the dom­i­nant in­ter­na­tion­al nar­ra­tive by again rais­ing the spec­tre of Ukraine plant­i­ng false flags and mis­in­for­ma­tion.

A min­istry spokesman, Ma­jor Gen. Ig­or Konashenkov, al­leged Ukraine’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices were prepar­ing a “cyn­i­cal staged” me­dia op­er­a­tion in Ir­pin, an­oth­er town near Kyiv. Konashenkov said the plan was to show — false­ly, he said — civil­ian ca­su­al­ties at the hands of the Rus­sians and to stage the slay­ing of a fake Russ­ian in­tel­li­gence team that in­tend­ed to kill wit­ness­es. The claims could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

Aus­tri­an Chan­cel­lor Karl Ne­ham­mer said dur­ing a vis­it to Kyiv that he ex­pects more EU sanc­tions against Rus­sia, but he de­fend­ed his coun­try’s op­po­si­tion so far to cut­ting off de­liv­er­ies of Russ­ian gas.

A pack­age of sanc­tions im­posed this week “won’t be the last one,” the chan­cel­lor said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that “as long as peo­ple are dy­ing, every sanc­tion is still in­suf­fi­cient.” Aus­tria is mil­i­tar­i­ly neu­tral and not a mem­ber of NA­TO.

John­son’s vis­it, which was not an­nounced in ad­vance, came a day af­ter the U.K. pledged an ad­di­tion­al 100 mil­lion pounds ($130 mil­lion) in high-grade mil­i­tary equip­ment to Ukraine.

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Cara An­na re­port­ed from Bucha, Ukraine. Robert Burns in Wash­ing­ton, Jill Law­less and Dan­i­ca Kir­ka in Lon­don and As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.