Europe|A missile strike hit a crowded shopping center in central Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/world/europe/kremenchuk-shopping-center-ukraine.html
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KREMENCHUK, Ukraine — A Russian missile strike hit a shopping center in Ukraine’s central Poltava region on Monday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more, the Ukrainian authorities said. It was the latest example of Russia’s willingness to inflict indiscriminate violence against civilians more than four-months into the war.
Ukraine’s president initially estimated that 1,000 people were inside the building at the time of the strike, which hit near a railway station in the industrial city of Kremenchuk.
Twelve people died on site, and another died after being taken to the hospital, Denys Monastyrskyi, Ukraine’s interior minister, said during a briefing at the site of the attack. He added that 25 people are currently hospitalized and 10 mall employees are still missing.
The nearest bomb shelter to the mall was across the street, but “not everyone made it,” Mr. Monastyrskyi told The New York Times. “People just burned alive.”
Videos shot after the strike and posted online showed a fire raging as emergency workers frantically tried to extinguish the flame and civilians loaded the injured into ambulances. Footage that appeared to be captured by people running for the exits showed them navigating a thick cloud of debris and dust as they clambered over broken windows, doors and crumbling walls.
By Monday evening, Ukrainian media reported that 115 firefighters had managed to put out the massive blaze and rescuers were continuing to search through the debris for survivors.
Sitting along the Dnieper River, Kremenchuk is a major Ukrainian industrial hub with factories that produce railway cars and trucks. It is also home to Ukraine’s largest oil refinery, which has been targeted repeatedly by Russian missiles, according to the local news media, part of Moscow’s strategy to destroy the country’s fuel production and storage infrastructure.
Ukraine’s air force said in a statement posted on Telegram that the shopping mall in Kremenchuk had been hit by missiles fired by long-range bombers from the Kursk region of Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the shopping mall had posed “no danger to the Russian army,” in comments posted to Telegram. “No strategic value. Only the attempt of people to live a normal life, which so angers the occupiers.”
The strike on Kremenchuk came after Russia, in a sudden escalation, fired more than 65 missiles at Ukraine over the weekend. On Monday, a strike in the northeastern city of Kharkiv killed five people and wounded 22, according to the local authorities.
Dmitry Polyanskiy, a deputy Russian ambassador to the United Nations, suggested on Twitter that the explosion and fire had been caused by the Ukrainians themselves. He described it as a “provocation” by Ukraine intended to keep attention on the country before an annual meeting of NATO countries this week in Madrid.
Kremenchuk had a population of almost 220,000 people before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in late February.
