Horror scenes as Putin hits the mall in Kremenchug, Ukraine, with “1,000 people” inside

Russia fired a series of missiles at a shopping mall in Kremenchug, Ukraine, on Monday, raising fears that Russia is escalating its attacks on civilian buildings regardless of the loss of life.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that there are more than 1,000 civilians inside the shopping center and the loss of life may bring more shock and horror to the Ukrainian people who are already facing a lot of death and destruction as Russia has been at war in Ukraine for 124 days. .

“It is impossible to imagine the number of victims,” Zelensky said in Telegram. “The mall is burning, rescuers are battling the fire.”

the authorities mentioned 10 people He was killed in the attack so far, according to the head of the Poltava region, Dmitry Lunin. Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, said they had documented it 20 wounded.

Videos from the site shared by a member of the Verkhovna Rada show smoke billowing from the shopping center and fires billowing into the sky.

The building’s walls began falling off shortly after the missile hit the building, according to a witness who shared footage from the site.

Rescuers trying to reach civilians encountered a wall of smoke, according to videos from the rescue mission shared by NeXTa TV.

It is just the latest example of Russian forces targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure that is of no strategic importance to fighting a war with Ukraine. In the early days of the war, Putin attacked a obstetrics Hospital. Only on Monday, the advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushenko, said that more than 100 bodies of the dead civilians are near the ruins of a destroyed apartment building in Mariupol. In the past few days, Russian bombing has also hit apartment buildings in the Odessa region, according to the Southern Operations Command.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said Monday that since the outbreak of the war, Russian forces have committed more than 19,700 crimes against Ukraine and its citizens.

Moscow has previously claimed that it did not target civilians in the war.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said the incident served as a reminder that Ukraine needed more weapons to help confront the threat of war with Russia, and “we need weapons to protect ourselves and modern air defense systems,” Gerashchenko said.

While some are concerned about fading American interest in the war in Ukraine, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, said this is a stark reminder that the United States and its allies can continue to try to punish the Russian government as Putin’s forces continue. for committing war crimes in Ukraine.” Another war crime by [R]American killers in Ukraine in this cruel war. We all have to stop #RussiaNow,” Markarova said.

The attack comes only a day later Russian forces launched missile attacks In both Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia carried out nearly 60 strikes over the weekend, a Senior US defense official Reporters in a phone call on Monday. The wave of escalation in central Ukrainian cities is raising fears that the Russian war has not moved permanently to the east and that Putin is able to escalate attacks across the country instead.

Earlier this month, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Carpenter, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview that the current US assessment is that Putin still has plans to try to take over all of Ukraine.