‘An act of terror’: At least 10 dead as Russian missiles strike a crowded Ukraine shopping mall
Scores of people are feared dead after a crowded shopping centre in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was hit in a missile strike by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said as many as 1,000 people were shopping at the time of the attack in the central city of Kremenchuk, a key industrial centre.
At least 10 people have been declared dead and 40 injured, though those numbers are expected to rise, as it is thought unlikely that many people will be found alive in the rubble.
Social media footage showed a huge fire and dark smoke billowing from the mall. Firefighters and soldiers were seen pulling out mangled pieces of metal as they searched for survivors.
The Ukrainian leader said it was impossible to “expect decency and humanity” from Moscow and that the shopping mall presented “no threat to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value”.
Ukraine government officials described the attack as an “act of terrorism” against civilians. An adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Russia hit the shopping centre “just because it wants to kill”, and called it “a terrorist state”.
The UN described the attack as “deplorable”, while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it “appalling”, adding that it demonstrated “once again the depths of cruelty and barbarism to which the Russian leader will sink”.
There was no immediate response from Russia, which has always denied targeting civilians in the war.
The attack came as leaders gathered for the G7 summit in Germany’s Bavarian Alps where the war in Ukraine was high on the agenda. Leaders pledged to continue supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”
President Zelensky told the group that he wants the war with Russia over by the end of 2022.
He addressed the leaders of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan by video link on Monday and urged them to provide more weapons for the struggle against Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Kremenchuk, an industrial city of 217,000 before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, lies on the Dnipro river in the region of Poltava and is the site of Ukraine’s biggest oil refinery.
Vadym Denysenko, an interior ministry adviser, said Russia could have had three motives for the attack.
“The first, undoubtedly, is to sow panic, the second is to… destroy our infrastructure, and the third is to… raise the stakes to get the civilised West to sit down again at the table for talks,” he said.
Russia, which captured Ukraine’s eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk over the weekend after a weeks-long assault, has stepped up missile strikes on targets across Ukraine in recent days.
Two people were killed in the strike with dozens more injured
The deadly attack also came just 24 hours before Nato leaders begin gathering for a summit in Madrid.
Ahead of two days of meetings, Nato announced it was boosting the number of its forces to be on high-alert because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 40,000 to more than 300,000.
It’s the biggest overhaul of collective defence since the Cold War, he said.
“We will transform the Nato response force and increase the number of our high readiness forces to well over 300,000.”
The shopping mall on fire afer being hit by a missile strike in Kremenchuk
Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a bilateral meeting with South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, during the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau
