KARMENCHUK, Ukraine – While emergency workers were combing the rubble of a devastated shopping center in central Ukraine Tuesday morning, the death toll from the Russian missile strike the previous day rose to 18, the city’s mayor said.
About 25 people were taken to hospital after the strike, Poltava region governor Dmytro Lunin said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, with 21 still missing. He added that rescuers are still digging among the rubble, but it is impossible to find anyone else alive.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Irina Venediktova, arrived at the scene on Tuesday with a team of investigators to gather evidence about what she described as a “war crime” under Ukrainian law and a crime against humanity.
Hundreds were inside the mall. Mayor Vitaly Malitsky wrote on Facebook that about 60 people had sought medical help. In a hospital where the wounded were being treated, five people were in critical condition, according to the chief medical officer, Oksana Korlyakova.
The prosecution denounced what it described as “the systematic bombing of civilian infrastructure: hospitals, kindergartens and commercial centers, as you can see here.”
“I am sure the Russians know very well that they are killing civilians,” Ms. Venediktova added. “For them this is not news, but they do it over and over again.”
The Russian Defense Ministry admitted in a statement on Tuesday that it had struck Kremenchug with what it described as high-precision missiles. But she said the mall was set on fire by an explosion at its primary target, which she said were warehouses containing ammunition for weapons systems supplied by the United States and European countries.
These allegations cannot be independently verified, and Ukraine’s Interior Minister told reporters on Tuesday that “there is no military target within a five-kilometer radius.”
A security camera from a gas station captured two Russian strikes on an area near the mall. And the video was posted on Telegram by Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of the Interior.
The video, which was analyzed by The New York Times, shows one hit near or on the premises of the mall, while the second hit an industrial site next to the mall. The industrial site is operated by Kredmash, the manufacturer of asphalt mixing plants, and Ukrainian authorities have said it serves no military purpose.
In a small park next to the shopping center, a temporary monument of 16 vases full of roses has been erected. Visitors steadfastly lit candles on the dead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an evening video address that the strike was premeditated. “This is not an accidental strike – it is a calculated Russian strike,” he said.
This was the sixth and deadliest Russian missile strike on Kremenchug, an industrial city with a pre-war population of 217,000. Although some residents have left, many displaced people have also arrived from places in the far east that have come under heavy bombardment, such as Kharkiv and Mariupol.
Among the wounded in Monday’s raid was Yulia, 22, who fled to Kremenchug from Kharkiv with her mother. They previously lived in Luhansk, a city that Moscow-backed separatists occupied in 2014.
Yulia and her mother, Larisa, fled to Kharkiv after the previous fighting, then fled again two months ago to Kremenchug due to heavy shelling in Kharkiv. Yulia found a job selling cell phones in the shopping center.
“We were hoping we’d be safe here,” said Larissa, who didn’t feel comfortable sharing her last name. “This is a deep shock to my soul.”
Contribute to reporting Ivan Nikiburnkoin Tbilisi, Georgia, Chivas Clark Williams And the Christian Tribert.
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