Firefighters and soldiers continue to search for survivors in the rubble of shopping malls in Central Ukraine today after a Russian missile attack killed at least 18 people in an attack condemned by the United Nations and the West.
A family of missing people lined up at a hotel across the street after a strike on Monday in the bustling shopping district of Kremenchuk in the Poltava region of southeastern Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 1,000 people were inside when two Russian missiles collided with the mall.
Poltava Governor Dmitro Lunin said at least 18 people were killed, 25 were hospitalized and about 36 were missing.
At the German summit, leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies said the attack was “disgusting.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin and his chief will be held accountable,” they said in a joint statement.
“It’s not an accidental hit, it’s just a calculated Russian strike to this shopping center,” Zelenskiy said in a video address on Monday evening.
Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, a survivor being treated at a public hospital in Kremenchuk, said she was shopping with her husband when she was thrown into the air by the blast.
“I first blew my head and the debris hit my body. The whole place had collapsed,” she said.
“It was hell,” her husband, Mikola, 45, added that blood was seeping through the bandages around his head.
Russia has not commented on the strike, but UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky accused Ukraine of using the incident to sympathize with it prior to the NATO military alliance summit from June 28 to 30. Did.
“We should wait for our Department of Defense to say, but there are already many significant contradictions,” Polyanskiy wrote on Twitter.
The UN Security Council will meet on Tuesday at the request of Ukraine after the attack.
UN spokesman Stephen Dujaric said the missile strike was sad.
On the battlefield, Ukraine endured another difficult day after weeks of artillery and street combat, after the loss of the now abandoned city of Severodonetsk.
Russian artillery bombarded Lysychans’k, the twin city of Siverskyi Donetsk, across the Siverskyi Donets.
Lysychans’k was the last metropolis held by Ukraine in eastern Luhansk Oblast and became the main target of the Kremlin after the Russian troops were unable to occupy the capital Kyiv early in the war.
According to Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai, eight residents, including children, were killed and 21 were injured in the bombardment when they gathered in Lysychans’k to get drinking water on Monday.
There were no immediate Russian comments.
I added that the Ukrainian army ruled the city, but the loss was possible because Russia poured resources into the battle.
“They really want this, and a lot of reserves have been put in just for this … you don’t have to lose your army for one city,” he told Reuters in an interview.
The separatist People’s Republic of Luhansk’s Moscow ambassador, Rodion Miloshnik, said that Russian troops and their allies in the Republic of Luhansk were heading west toward Lysychansik, and street battles broke out around the city’s stadiums. Stated.
Mr Miloshnick said on the Telegram channel that fighting was taking place in several villages in the city, with Russian and allied troops entering the Lysychans’k refinery, where Ukrainian troops are concentrated.
Reuters could not confirm Russia’s report that Moscow troops had already entered the city.
Russia also bombarded the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine on Monday, attacking apartment buildings and elementary schools, the governor said.
The bombardment killed five people and injured 22. The governor said some of the injured had children.