Macron: Russian strike on mall is ‘a war crime’
KREMENCHUK, Ukraine — France’s president denounced Russia’s fiery airstrike on a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine as a “new war crime” Tuesday and vowed the West’s support for Kyiv would not waver, saying Moscow “cannot and should not win” the war.
The strike, which killed at least 18 people in the central city of Kremenchuk, came as leaders from the Group of Seven nations met in Europe. It was part of an unusually intense barrage of Russian fire across Ukraine, including in the capital, Kyiv, that renewed international attention as the war drags on.
Speaking at the end of the G-7 summit in Germany, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to address that concern, vowing that the seven leading industrialized democracies would support Ukraine and maintain sanctions against Russia “as long as necessary and with the necessary intensity.”
“Russia cannot and should not win,” he said. He called Monday’s attack on the mall “a new war crime.”
As they have in other attacks, Russian officials claimed the shopping center was not the target.
In a virtual address to the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia has become a terrorist state and called for it to be expelled from the United Nations. He also urged the U.N. to establish an international tribunal to investigate Russia’s action in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy ended his address by asking all in the chamber to stand in silent tribute to the “tens of thousands” of Ukrainian children and adults killed in the war. All council members rose, including Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky.
How to counter Russia and back Ukraine will also be the focus of a summit this week of NATO, whose support has been critical to Kyiv’s ability to fend off Moscow’s larger and better equipped forces. Ukrainian leaders, however, say they need more and better weapons if they are to hold off and even drive back Russia, which is pressing an all-out assault in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
As Macron spoke, rescuers combed through the charred rubble of the shopping mall, which officials said was struck when more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and workers were inside.
In addition to the 18 killed, authorities said 59 were wounded, while 21 people were still missing.
Rocket attacks continued elsewhere in Ukraine, with authorities in the city of Dnipro reporting that workers at a diesel car repair shop were trapped in rubble after a strike from a cruise missile fired from the Black Sea, Ukrainian news agencies reported. The Ukrainian military managed to intercept and destroy other missiles fired at the city, the agencies said.
In other developments, the two fighting countries continued a sporadic series of prisoner exchanges. Ukraine exchanged 15 Russian prisoners of war for 16 Ukrainian soldiers and one civilian, the Ukrainian Pravda news outlet reported Tuesday.
Ukrainian Pravda also reported that in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the mayor was detained Tuesday and occupying authorities seized his computer hard drive and documents after he refused to cooperate with Russian-appointed local officials. Russia’s Tass news agency confirmed the detention.