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A barrage of Russian missiles destroyed a crowded shopping mall in central Ukraine on Monday, though the Russian Ministry of Defense claims the missiles struck a nearby weapons depot.
There were more than 1,000 people inside the Kremenchuk mall at the time of the strikes, which left at least 18 people dead. Ukrainian and Western leaders denounced the act as a war crime and terrorist attack. In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defense denied hitting the mall, though Ukrainian officials have contradicted the claim.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram that Russia’s forces “struck a weapons depot storing arms received from the United States and Europe with high-precision air-based weapons,” adding, “The detonation of stored ammunition for Western weapons caused a fire in a non-functioning shopping center located next to the depot.”
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike “one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history.”
“Only totally insane terrorists, who should have no place on earth, can strike missiles at such an object,” he added. “And this is not an off-target missile strike, this is a calculated Russian strike — exactly at this shopping mall.”
The strike hearkens back to other strikes on highly populated civilian structures in earlier phases of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which recently entered its fifth month. Russian forces previously hit a train station in Kramatorsk, killing at least 50 people, a maternity hospital in Mariupol, and a Mariupol theater that was serving as a shelter, even though locals had spelled out the word “children” in Russian on the ground in the front and back of the facility to prevent such an attack.
Russia denied many of these attacks at the time as well, part of an ongoing misinformation campaign designed to shape the narrative in Russia’s favor at home and abroad.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, whose office is leading the country’s ongoing investigations into war crimes, inspected the crime scene on Tuesday and said that her team will collect evidence “in accordance with the international standards for prosecution before the Ukrainians courts and the International Criminal Court.”
The strike coincided with the final day of the G-7 Summit in Germany, and many leaders will be heading to Spain for a NATO summit in the coming days. The allies reaffirmed their commitment to helping Ukraine defend itself, though Ukraine continues to be outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield.
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“Russia’s attack on civilians at a shopping mall is cruel,” President Joe Biden said. “We stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. As demonstrated at the G7 Summit, the U.S. along with our allies and partners will continue to hold Russia accountable for such atrocities and support Ukraine’s defense.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed shortly before the attack that the U.S. would be including an advanced air defense system in the next military aid package following a request directly from Zelensky, which was prompted by rocket fire directed toward the capital, Kyiv, for the first time in about three weeks.
