What diplomacy and outrage looked like on 12 April 2022
A look back at the international pressures and diplomatic moves that formed the backdrop to 12 April 2022, seven weeks into the war.
What was the international picture on 12 April 2022? The reports from the days leading up to that date show a world reacting to atrocities while diplomacy continued in parallel.
Condemnation after Bucha and Kramatorsk
On 6 April 2022, Pope Francis condemned the massacre in Bucha during his weekly audience at the Vatican, calling for the war to stop and for weapons to fall silent. The next day, 7 April, the UN General Assembly voted to suspend Russia's membership of the UN Human Rights Council amid global outrage over Bucha. The vote was 93 countries in favour and 24 against, with 58 abstaining. The abstentions were a large bloc: a sizeable share of states chose neither to endorse nor to oppose the move.
On 8 April, a Russian missile strike hit the railway station in Kramatorsk, which was being used to evacuate civilians. Officials reported 57 people killed and 109 wounded. Many European officials condemned the attack, while Russia's Ministry of Defence denied carrying it out.
Evacuation routes and contamination
Humanitarian corridors were another strand of the picture. On 6 April, eleven corridors were due to open: from Mariupol, Berdiansk, Tokmak, Enerhodar, Huliaipole and Melitopol towards Zaporizhzhia, and from Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Rubizhne and Hirske towards Bakhmut. The Kramatorsk strike, two days later, showed that the routes used by civilians to leave were themselves exposed to danger.
On 9 April, it was reported that anomalously high radiation levels had been recorded in parts of the Chornobyl exclusion zone where Russian troops had dug trenches and tried to build fortifications during their occupation of the site, which ended at the close of March.
Talks with Moscow
Diplomacy ran alongside these events. On 9 April, President Zelensky held talks with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. Nehammer announced that he would meet Russian President Putin in Moscow on 11 April, making him the first European leader to do so in person since the war began. That meeting meant that, by 12 April, a European leader had just sat down with the Russian president even as condemnation of Russian actions was growing at the UN and in European capitals.
What the sequence shows
Taken together, the reports from 6 to 9 April describe two tracks moving at once: formal international censure, expressed through the Vatican, the General Assembly and European officials, and direct engagement with Moscow. The UN vote showed wide support for suspension but also a substantial number of states unwilling to take a side. The Kramatorsk attack, with its civilian toll and Russia's denial, set the tone for the days that followed.
