Russia kills 16 in attack on mall
Putin will pay: G7
KYIV: A Russian missile strike on a crowded shopping mall in central Ukraine killed at least 16 people in what the G7 leaders meeting in Germany branded “a war crime”, as they sought to impose harsh new sanctions on Moscow.
The leaders vowed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and all those responsible would be held to account for the strike in the city of Kremenchuk, carried out during the shopping mall’s busiest hours.
“Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime,” they said in a statement condemning the “abominable attack”.
Ukraine accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians, with President Volodymyr Zelensky calling it “one of the most brazen terrorist acts in European history” in his evening national broadcast.
“A peaceful town, an ordinary shopping centre – women, children, ordinary civilians inside,” said Mr Zelensky, who earlier shared a video of the mall engulfed in flames with dozens of rescuers and a fire truck outside.
Emergency services chief Sergiy Kruk said the death toll from the massacre had risen to 16, with 59 others wounded.
“All response groups are working in intense mode,” Mr Kruk said. “The work will go on around the clock.”
In separate attacks, Russian rockets killed at least eight civilians as they were out collecting water in the eastern city of Lysychansk, said Luhansk region governor Sergiy Gaiday.
And a strike in Kharkiv killed four people and wounded 19 others, including four children, said Oleg Synegubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional administration.
“The enemy is deliberately terrorising the civilian population,” Mr Synegubov said in a statement on Telegram.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaking from the G7 gathering in the Bavarian Alps, said the Kremenchuk attack demonstrated Putin’s “depths of cruelty and barbarism”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the world was “horrified”, while UN chief Antonio Guterres’s office condemned the strike as “totally deplorable”.
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack as an “abomination”.
Diplomats said Ukraine requested a Tuesday meeting on the strikes at the UN Security Council, where Russia wields veto power but has not been able to prevent critical discussion of the invasion it launched on February 24.
US President Joe Biden and his G7 peers are seeking to tighten the economic screws on Moscow, even as soaring energy and food prices drive up global inflation.
“We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the G7 said in a statement.