Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Tuesday, firefighters and soldiers looked for survivors in the rubble of a shopping mall in central Ukrai...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Tuesday, firefighters and soldiers looked for survivors in the rubble of a shopping mall in central Ukraine where at least 16 people were killed by a Russian missile strike. The attack, which was condemned by the UN and the West, killed at least 16 people.
After the attack on the busy mall in Kremenchuk, southeast of Kyiv, on Monday, the families of the missing people lined up at a hotel across the street where rescue workers had set up a base.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that more than 1,000 people were in the mall when two Russian missiles hit it. Emergency services in Ukraine said that at least 16 people were killed and 59 were hurt.
"This wasn't a mistake. The Russians planned to hit this shopping centre," Zelenskiy said in a video message sent in the evening. He said that more people could die.
The office of the prosecutor general in Ukraine said that more than 40 people had been reported missing.
Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, who is being treated at Kremenchuk's public hospital, said the explosion threw her into the air while she was shopping with her husband.
"I fell on my head, and splinters hit me. The place as a whole was falling apart, "she told me.
"It was hell," said her 45-year-old husband, Mykola, whose head was wrapped in a bandage through which blood was dripping.
Russia hasn't said anything about the strike, but its deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said Ukraine was using it to get sympathy before a NATO summit on June 28–30.
"One should wait to see what our Ministry of Defense says, but there are already too many big differences," Polyanskiy said on Twitter.
After the attack, Ukraine asked for a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN, called the missile attack "deplorable."
At a meeting in Germany, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies said that the attack was "horrible."
"Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held accountable," they said in a joint statement that the German government spokesperson tweeted.
BATTLE FOR LYSYCHANSK
On another part of the battlefield, the Ukraine had another hard day after the city of Sievierodonetsk, which had been bombed and fought over for weeks, was destroyed.
Russian artillery hit Lysychansk, which is a twin city of Sievierodonetsk on the other side of the Siverskyi Donets River.
Lysychansk is the last big city in eastern Luhansk province that is still held by Ukraine. It is a main target for the Kremlin after Russian troops failed to take Kyiv, the capital, early in the war.
Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the area, said that a Russian missile strike in Lysychansk on Monday killed eight people and hurt 21 others. Russia didn't say anything right away.
Russia's forces were trying to cut Lysychansk off from the south, according to the Ukrainian military.
The ambassador of the Luhansk People's Republic to Moscow, Rodion Miroshnik, said that Russian troops and their allies from the Luhansk Republic were moving west into Lysychansk and that street battles had broken out near the city's stadium.
Miroshnik said on his Telegram channel that fighting was going on in several villages near the city, and that Russian and allied troops had moved into the Lysychansk oil refinery, where most of the Ukrainian troops were.
Russian news sources said that Moscow's troops had already moved into the city, but Reuters could not confirm this.
The governor of the area said that Russia also fired shells at the city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine on Monday. The shells hit apartment buildings and a primary school.
Five people were killed and 22 were hurt by the shelling. The governor said that some of the people who were hurt were children.
"FOR HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES"
Moscow says it is not targeting civilians in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, but Kyiv and the West have accused Russian forces of committing war crimes.
The war has killed thousands of people, forced millions to leave their homes, and caused food and energy prices to rise around the world.
During their meeting in Germany, G7 leaders, including U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, said they would keep sanctions on Russia for as long as they were needed and put more pressure on President Vladimir Putin's government and its ally Belarus.
The US also said that it was putting the finishing touches on a second package of weapons for Ukraine that would include long-range air defence systems.
In a video message to the G7 leaders, Zelenskiy asked for more weapons, U.S. and European officials said. He asked for help to get grain from Ukraine to other countries and for more sanctions to be put on Russia.
The G7 countries promised to put more pressure on Russia's finances. One U.S. official said that a cap on the price of Russian oil was "close," and the G7 also promised up to $29.5 billion more for Ukraine.
The White House said that Russia had stopped paying its foreign debts for the first time in more than a century because sanctions have cut the country off from the world's financial system.
Russia said that the claims were not true and told the investors to go to Western financial agents to get the money that was sent but not given to the bondholders.
