A new horror scene in Ukraine after the bombings of kyiv on Sunday. On Monday, a Russian missile hit a “busy” shopping center in Kremenchuk, a city in the center of the country, located 330 km southeast of kyiv and more than 200 km from the front. The provisional toll is at least 13 dead and 40 injured. But “It is too early to speak of the final number of dead”, underlined Dmytro Lunine, the governor of the Poltava region.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the mall was hit by Kh-22 anti-ship missiles fired from Tu-22 long-range bombers from Russia’s Kursk region. Images posted on social networks show the infrastructure in flames.
Zelensky denounces a “shameless terrorist act”
“Today’s Russian strike on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most brazen acts of terrorism in European history. A peaceful city, an ordinary shopping center (with) inside women, children, ordinary civilians,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram.
According to him, a thousand people were inside the building but “many people managed to get out”. “Only absolutely insane terrorists could strike such a facility with missiles, and they should have no place on Earth,” he continued, referring to a “calculated strike.”
According to the president, rescue operations are still in progress and “the human losses could be significant”, a fire having broken out on an area of 10,000 square meters after the explosion. This city in central Ukraine had some 220,000 inhabitants before the war and had so far been spared from bombardment.
International reactions
On Twitter, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced “absolute horror” and called on the Russian people to “see the truth”, by posting the video of the shopping center fire. In a statement, French diplomacy said that Moscow “will have to answer for these acts”.
“Indiscriminate attacks against innocent civilians constitute a war crime,” the G7 leaders said in the evening from their summit in southern Germany, in a statement that “solemnly condemns the heinous attack” and assures that Vladimir Putin will have to “be accountable”.
In New York, the spokesperson for the UN, Stéphane Dujarric, recalled that the belligerents were bound by international law to “protect civilians and civilian infrastructure”, judging the new strike “totally deplorable”.
An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the latest Russian bombings against civilian targets in Ukraine will be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m. GMT (9 p.m. French time)