Russia fired a series of rockets at a shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on Monday, raising concerns that Russia was stepping up attacks on civilian structures, regardless of the casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that there are more than a thousand civilians in the mall, and the impending casualties could bring even more shock and horror to the Ukrainian people, who are already facing so much death and destruction as Russia goes to war. in Ukraine for 124 days.
“The number of victims is impossible to imagine,” Zelenski told the Telegram. “The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said there were currently 2 confirmed dead and 20 injured.
Videos from the scene, which a member of the Ukrainian parliament shared, show smoke billowing from the mall and raging fires in the sky.
The walls of the structure began to fall shortly after the rocket hit the building, according to a witness who shared footage from the scene.
Rescuers trying to reach civilians collide with a wall of smoke, according to footage from the rescue mission shared by NEXTA TV.
This is simply the latest example of Russian forces targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure that are not strategically important in waging war on Ukraine. In the first days of the war, Putin attacked a maternity hospital. On Monday alone, Mariupol mayor’s adviser Petro Andryushchenko said more than 100 bodies of dead civilians were near the rubble of a destroyed apartment building in Mariupol. In the last few days, Russian shelling has also hit residential buildings in the Odessa region, according to Operational Command South.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said Monday since the outbreak of the war, Russian troops have committed more than 19,700 crimes against Ukraine and its citizens.
Moscow has previously claimed that it was not targeted at civilians during the war.
The Interior Ministry said the incident was a reminder that Ukraine needed more weapons to help face the threat of war with Russia. “We need weapons to defend ourselves and modern air defense systems,” Gerashchenko said.
As some worry that US attention to the war in Ukraine is waning, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova said it was a stark reminder that the United States and its allies could continue to try to punish the Russian government while Putin’s forces continue to commit war crimes in Ukraine. “Another war crime from [R]Russian assassins in Ukraine in this brutal war. Everyone should #StopRussiaNow, “Markarova said.
The attack comes just a day after Russian forces launched missile attacks on both Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia struck about 60 strikes over the weekend, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters during a conversation Monday. The whirlwind of escalation in central Ukrainian cities raises concerns that the Russian war has not moved permanently to the east and that Putin is instead able to step up attacks across the country.
Earlier this month, US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Michael Carpenter told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview that the current US assessment is that Putin still has plans to try to seize all of Ukraine.
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