KYIV, Ukraine – A shopping mall in central Ukraine’s Poltava was hit by a Russian missile attack on Monday afternoon, Ukrainian authorities said.
The Ukrainian president said an estimated 1,000 people were inside the building at the time of the strike. When rescuers carried out an examination of the scene, Ukraine’s emergency services said two people were confirmed dead and at least 20 others were injured.
Video taken after the strike and posted online shows the fire raging as emergency workers frantically trying to put out the flames and civilians loading the wounded into ambulances near the railway station in the industrial city of Kremenchuk. Footage that appeared to have been captured by exit runners showed them navigating a dense cloud of dust and dust as they climbed over broken windows, doors and crumbling walls.
By Monday evening, Ukrainian media reported that 115 firefighters had extinguished the massive blaze.
Located on the Dnieper River, Kremenchuk is a major industrial center of Ukraine with factories for the production of railway cars and trucks. According to local media, it is also home to Ukraine’s largest oil refinery, which has been repeatedly targeted by Russian missiles as part of Moscow’s strategy to destroy production infrastructure. and the country’s fuel storage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the mall “does not pose a danger to the Russian military” in comments posted on Telegram. “There is no strategic value. There is only human effort to live a normal life, which infuriates the occupants. Russia continues to place its helplessness on ordinary citizens. It is useless to hope for completeness and humanity on our part”.
The attack on the Kremenchuk Palace comes after Russia fired more than 65 rockets into Ukraine on Saturday and Sunday, including an attack in the capital Kyiv that left one person dead.
Poltava’s regional governor, Dmytro Lunin, called the attack a “cynical act of terrorism against civilians” and constituted a “war crime”.
And Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, criticized the attack and called on Ukraine’s Western allies to provide the country with more defensive weapons.
“We need more weapons to protect our people, we need air defense systems,” he wrote on Telegram. “Russia must be recognized as a sponsor of terrorism. This evil must be punished.”
Pro-Kremlin journalists were quick to deny Russia’s involvement and offer alternative theories as to what caused the fire.
Andrei Rudenko, a reporter for Russian state television network Rossiya, called the fire “a provocation” and cast doubt on claims that 1,000 people were inside the mall by citing pictures of the parking lot. empty car in front of it.
“It feels like they burned it all on their own and shot at it to make the photo look better,” he said in his channel on Telegram, a social messaging app.
Other pro-Russian commentators suggested that a large machinery factory behind the mall was the target, saying the mall itself was collateral damage.
Kremenchuk had a population of nearly 220,000 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in late February.
