A Russian missile strike hit a crowded shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Monday, killing at least two people and wounding 20, senior Ukrainian officials said.
The attack caused a huge fire and sent dark smoke billowing into the sky, footage circulated by President Volodymyr Zelensky showed.
A Reuters reporter saw the charred husk of a shopping complex with a caved-in roof. Firefighters and soldiers were pulling out mangled pieces of metal as they searched for survivors.
“We don’t understand how many people could be remaining under the rubble,” the regional rescue service chief said on television.
Zelensky said more than 1,000 people were in the shopping centre at the time of the attack. He gave no details of casualties but said: “It is impossible to even imagine the number of victims.”
“It’s useless to hope for decency and humanity from Russia,” Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
A rescue operation was underway and nine of the wounded were in serious condition, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the presidential office.
No immediate comment from Russia
Kremenchuk, an industrial city of 217,000 before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, lies on the Dnipro river in the region of Poltava and is the site of Ukraine’s biggest oil refinery.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which denies deliberately targeting civilians.
“We need more weapons to protect our people, we need missile defences,” Andriy Yermak, head of the president’s office, said.
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 civilized west to sit down again at the table for talks,” he said.
WATCH | Kyiv again in sights after pause of several weeks:
An apartment building and a kindergarten classroom were among the places destroyed during the first Russian missile attacks against Kyiv in weeks.
Russia, which captured Ukraine’s eastern front-line city of Severodonetsk over the weekend after a weeks-long assault, has stepped up missile strikes on targets across Ukraine in recent days.
Missiles slammed into an apartment block and landed close to a kindergarten in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, killing one person and wounding several more people.
G7 reaffirms support
The development comes as the leaders of the Group of Seven major democracies, including Canada, said they would keep sanctions on Moscow for as long as necessary and would intensify international economic and political pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and its ally Belarus.
The U.S. said it was finalizing a weapons package for Ukraine that would include long-range air-defence systems — arms that Zelensky specifically requested when he addressed the leaders by video link from Kyiv on Monday.
WATCH | Russia gaining territory in east, but at great expense: analyst:
Russia has seized a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine but at a ‘massive price,’ says British defence analyst Nicholas Drummond. And the West has to help Ukraine keep up that cost so Russia will quit the war.
Despite the boost from its allies, Ukraine was enduring another difficult day on the battlefront.
Russian shelling of the city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine killed four people and wounded 19 on Monday, the regional governor said.
“Doctors are providing all the necessary assistance. Information on the number of victims is being updated,” Oleh Synehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said on the Telegram messaging app.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Russian artillery was also pounding Lysychansk, just across the Siverskyi Donets River from now-ruined Severodonetsk.
Luhansk province governor Serhiy Gaidai said Lysychansk was suffering “catastrophic” damage. He urged civilians to evacuate urgently.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said the Russians were trying to cut off Lysychansk from the south. Russian war planes had also struck near the city, the general staff said in its daily update.
Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province make up the Donbas region — Ukraine’s industrial heartland. The Donbas became a prime target for the Kremlin after Russian troops failed to take the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the war, which is now in its fifth month.
Russian forces also control territory in the south, including the port city of Mariupol, which fell after a long siege that left it in ruins.
