Russian missile destroys busy Ukrainian shopping center

A Russian missile hit a “busy” shopping center in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, on Monday, killing and injuring people, authorities said, adding that the toll could be very heavy.

According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, at least two people were killed and 20 others injured, nine of them in serious condition. “Rescue operations continue,” he wrote on Telegram.

“Occupiers fired a missile at a mall where more than a thousand civilians were present. The mall is on fire and rescuers are battling the blaze. The number of casualties is impossible to imagine,” the president wrote on Facebook. Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky.

The governor denounces a “war crime”

He accompanied his message with a video showing the shopping center on fire, emitting large clouds of smoke, with fire engines and a dozen people on site.

“The missile fire on Kremenchuk hit a very crowded place that has no connection with the hostilities”, for his part indicated on Facebook Vitali Maletsky, the mayor of this city which had 220,000 inhabitants before the war.

“There are dead and injured. More details will come,” he added.

Regional Governor Dmytro Lounin denounced a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity”, as well as an “undisguised and cynical act of terror against the civilian population”.