Zelensky said the shopping centre 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”.
Kiril Zhebolovsky,24,was looking for his friend,Ruslan,22,who worked at the Comfy electronics store and hadn’t been heard from since the blast. “We sent him messages,called,but nothing,” he said. He left his name and phone number with the rescue workers in case his friend is found.
In his nightly address,he said it appeared Russian forces had intentionally targeted the shopping centre and added,“Today’s Russian strike at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.” He said Russia “has become the largest terrorist organisation in the world”.
Kremenchuk,an industrial city of 217,000 before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine,lies on the Dnipro River in the region of Poltava and is the site of Ukraine’s biggest oil refinery.
Russia has increasingly used long-range bombers in the war. Ukrainian officials said Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flying over Russia’s western Kursk region fired the missiles,one of which hit the centre and another that struck a sports arena in Kremenchuk.
The strike echoed earlier attacks that caused large numbers of civilian casualties — such as one in March on aMariupol theatre where many civilians had holed up,killing an estimated 600,and another in April ona train station in eastern Kramatorsk that killed at least 59 people.
“Russia continues to take out its impotence on ordinary civilians. It is useless to hope for decency and humanity on its part,” Zelensky said.
The United Nations called the strike “deplorable”,stressing that civilian infrastructure “should never ever be targeted,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. G7 leaders condemned the attack in a statement saying “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime. Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account.”
The attack coincided with Russia’s 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. At least eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded in Lysychansk when Russian rockets hit an area where a crowd gathered to obtain water from a tank,Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said.
The barrage was part of Russian forces’ intensified offensive aimed at wresting the eastern Donbas region from Ukraine. Over the weekend,the Russian military and their local separatist allies forced Ukrainian government troops out of Lysychansk’s neighbouring city,Sievierodonetsk.
To the west of Lysychansk,the mayor of the city of Sloviansk — potentially the next major battleground — said Russian forces fired cluster munitions,including one that hit a residential neighbourhood. Authorities said the number of victims had yet to be confirmed. The Associated Press saw one fatality:A man’s body lay hunched over a car door frame,his blood pooling onto the ground from chest and head wounds. The blast blew out most windows in the surrounding apartment blocks and the cars parked below,littering the ground with broken glass.
“Everything is now destroyed,” said resident Valentina Vitkovska,in tears as she spoke about the blast. “We are the only people left living in this part of the building. There is no power. I can’t even call to tell others what had happened to us.”
The Russian forces also pummelled other Ukrainian cities,killing at least five people and wounding 15 others in Kharkiv,Ukraine’s second-largest city and striking the key southern Black Sea port of Odesa where a missile attack destroyed residential buildings and wounded six people,including a child,according to Ukrainian authorities said.
In Lysychansk,at least five high-rise buildings and the last road bridge were damaged over the past day,Haidai said. A crucial highway linking the city to government-held territory to the south was rendered impassable. The city’s pre-war population of around 100,000 has dwindled to fewer than 10,000.
‘I want my son back’:Father pleads with Putin
Meanwhile,the father of a Moroccan man facing execution after being captured by Russia-backed separatists while fighting in Ukraine appealed on Monday to Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene,“as a father” to spare his son from the firing squad.
“I want my son back,just like any father would,” Taher Saadoun told reporters in the Moroccan capital,Rabat.
Saadoun also called on Morocco’s government to pursue negotiations on behalf of his 21-year-old son,Brahim,who was sentenced this month to the death penalty alongside two Britons,Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner - the first foreign fighters sentenced by the Russian-backed rebels.
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They were given a month to appeal,and could be executed as soon as early July if they don’t.
The proceedings were denounced by the West as a sham and a violation of the rules of war,but the sentence was supported by Russian officials.
The Donetsk republic’s self-styled “foreign minister,” Nataliya Nikonorova,told Russian state TV on Monday that none of the three condemned men have filed yet for pardons.
While the court claimed Saadoun was a mercenary,his father insisted that he was enlisted in Ukraine’s regular army and that when he was captured,he was wearing an official Ukrainian army uniform and carrying a weapon with serial numbers belonging to the Ukrainian government.
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The father,a retired member of Morocco’s Royal Gendarmerie,said he hasn’t heard from anyone from the Moroccan government about his son’s situation,but they ought to get in touch “because I pay taxes and I am a military man who carried weapons to defend my country.”
The Moroccan Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier this month that Saadoun obtained Ukrainian citizenship and enlisted in the Ukrainian army “of his own free will,” and is imprisoned by “an entity which is recognised neither by the United Nations nor by Morocco.” It has not commented on efforts for his release.