Moscow denies hitting shopping mall
KYIV/MOSCOW — Russia clarified on Tuesday that damage to a shopping mall in eastern Ukraine was caused as a result of missile strikes on a nearby weapons depot.
Ukraine’s emergency services had claimed two missiles slammed into the shopping center in the central city of Kremenchuk on Monday, killing at least 16 people.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday said the missiles fired at the weapons depot set off an explosion that triggered a fire at the mall. Russia has repeatedly stressed that its forces do not target civilian infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 1,000 people were in the mall at the time of the missile strikes. Witnesses described a huge fire that sent dark smoke billowing into the sky.
Amid the accusations leveled against Russia over the mall casualties, the leaders of the Group of Seven major countries, meeting in Germany, said they would keep sanctions on Russia for as long as necessary and intensify international pressure on President Vladimir Putin’s government and its ally Belarus.
The United States said it was finalizing another weapons package for Ukraine that would include long-range air-defense systems, arms that Zelensky specifically requested when he addressed the leaders by video link on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday the more Western countries send weapons to Ukraine the longer the conflict will last.
More diplomats expelled
In its latest response to weapon supplies to Kyiv from Western countries, Russia ordered eight Greek diplomats to leave the country within eight days, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Greek Ambassador to Russia Ekaterini Nassika was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in protest over the expulsion of Russian diplomats in Greece and Greece’s supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, the statement said.
In other developments, Ukraine has terminated two agreements with Russia relating to cooperation on nuclear safety.
The scrapping of the agreements with Russia was announced by Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy operator Energoatom on Monday.
Kyiv withdrew from the agreement between the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety of Ukraine and Russia’s Federal Nuclear and Radiation Safety Survey on cooperation in nuclear and radiation safety signed on Sept 19, 1996.
The country also scrapped the agreement between Russia’s Federal Supervision of Nuclear and Radiation Safety and the State Nuclear Regulatory Committee of Ukraine on the exchange of information and cooperation in the field of safety regulation when using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The deal had been signed on Aug 14, 2002.