War against Ukraine: At least 13 dead in attack on shopping mall

At least 13 people have been killed in a rocket attack on a busy shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk. More than 40 were injured. Western politicians speak of war crimes.

A few hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the G7 summit, a busy shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was hit by a rocket. At least 13 people died and at least 40 were injured, said the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin.

At the time of the attack, more than a thousand people were in the mall, Zelensky said. “It’s useless to hope for decency and humanity from Russia,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

“Kremenchuk’s rocket fire hit a busy place unrelated to the fighting,” the city’s mayor, Vitaly Maletsky, wrote on Facebook. Governor Lunin accused the Russian troops of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”. A rocket attack on a crowded shopping center is a “cynical act of terrorism against the civilian population”.

So far there has been no reaction from Russia. The government in Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians. Some of the information cannot be independently verified.

Region has been spared from attacks so far

Kremenchuk is located about 250 kilometers southeast of the capital Kyiv. The area has so far been largely spared from the fighting since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in February. The country’s largest oil refinery is located there. In the immediate vicinity of the shopping center there are several industrial plants, including a factory for road construction machinery. According to civil protection, 115 firefighters with 20 fire engines were deployed.

According to local authorities, the fire was extinguished in the evening. A largely burned-out building could be seen in a video distributed by Governor Lunin on Telegram. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the mall was hit by Kh-22 anti-ship missiles launched from Russia’s Kursk region. Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said a second missile had hit a local sports stadium.

High-ranking politicians are appalled

The attack was condemned by high-ranking politicians in the West. “The world is appalled by Russia’s rocket attack today that hit a busy mall,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted. The US would continue to support Ukraine and hold those responsible for atrocities accountable.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Russian President Vladimir Putin “abject cruelty and barbarism”. However, Putin’s only effect is to strengthen the determination of Great Britain and the other G7 countries to support Ukraine “for as long as necessary”.

The chair of the Bundestag Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, wrote on Twitter that the attacks were “heinous war crimes”. Support for Ukraine must be “drastically” accelerated.

Further attacks on Kharkiv and Lysychansk

Rockets also fell in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. Four people were killed, said regional governor Oleg Sinegubow. 19 other people were injured, including four children. “The enemy is deliberately terrorizing civil society,” Sinegubov wrote on Telegram.

In the east of the country, the city of Lysychansk and surrounding towns continued to be heavily shelled. Lysychansk is the next key target for Russian troops, after taking the neighboring town of Sievarodonetsk after weeks of fighting over the weekend.

The Luhansk region, one of the two sub-regions of the Donbass, is almost entirely under Russian control. “Lysychansk and the surrounding villages are going through their hardest days. The Russians are destroying everything on their way,” said Luhansk’s regional governor Serhiy Hajday.