SLOVIANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Scores of civilians were feared killed or wounded in a Russian missile strike Monday on a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that the number of victims was “unimaginable,” citing reports that more than 1,000 civilians were inside at the time of the attack. Images from the scene showed giant plumes of black smoke from the shopping center engulfed in flames, as emergency crews rushed in and onlookers watched in distress.
At least 11 people were dead and more than 40 wounded, according to the regional governor, Dmytro Lunin, who said that rescuers were continuing to comb the smoldering debris for more victims.
Zelenskyy said the target presented “no threat to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value.” He accused Russia of sabotaging “people’s attempts to live a normal life, which make the occupiers so angry.”
The Ukrainian military said the shopping center was hit by missiles fired by Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers from the skies over Russia’s western Kursk region.
The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said that one missile hit the shopping center and another struck a sports arena in Kremenchuk.
The Russian strike carried echoes of attacks earlier in the war that caused large numbers of civilian casualties — such as one in March on a Mariupol theater where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that left at least 59 people dead.
“Russia continues to take out its impotence on ordinary civilians. It is useless to hope for decency and humanity on its part,” Zelenskyy said.
Mayor Vitaliy Maletskiy wrote on Facebook that the attack “hit a very crowded area, which is 100% certain not to have any links to the armed forces.”
The attack came as Russia was mounting an all-out assault on the last Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province, “pouring fire” on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, according to the local governor.
Russian forces appeared to step up an offensive centering on trying to wrest the eastern Donbas region from Ukraine after forcing government troops out of the neighboring city of Sievierodonetsk in recent days.
