Russia hits more Ukrainian cities after shopping centre strike kills 18

Russian missiles have hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro as emergency crews continued to search the ruins of a devastated shopping centre in Kremenchuk, where 21 people were still missing a day after a rocket strike killed at least 18 people.

Ukrainian and western leaders described the attack on the shopping centre as a war crime, and dismissed Moscow’s claim that it was disused and empty and caught fire after a Russian missile hit a nearby warehouse where weapons were being stored.

Russia offered no evidence for its claim and there were no reports from Kremenchuk of the sort of secondary explosions that occur after strikes on sites containing weapons; on the other hand journalists in the city interviewed many survivors who said they were simply working or shopping in the mall.

“I flew head-first and splinters hit my body. The whole place was collapsing,” said one shopper Ludmyla Mykhailets (43).

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“It was hell,” added her husband Mykola (45).

Ukrainian interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi said 18 people were confirmed dead, 59 had been wounded, and 21 were still unaccounted for after rescue workers had cleared about 60 per cent of the ruins of the building.

“It’s hard to say what the enemy planned. But this is not the first time it has struck civilian targets,” he said. “This is a completely civilian site. Neither the armed forces nor other military units have ever been stationed here. There are no bunkers or warehouses with weapons.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called it “one of the most brazen terrorist acts in European history”. and G7 leaders denounced Russia and said that “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime”.

Kyiv officials said Russia fired more than 100 cruise missiles at cities across Ukraine over the last four days, and on Monday alone at least five civilians were killed when rockets hit a school and apartment block in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and eight people were killed by shelling when collecting water in the city of Lysychansk, where fighting is now fierce.

Several missiles struck Dnipro on Tuesday, trapping an unknown number of people under rubble, according to city mayor Borys Filatov, who said one rocket hit a car repair garage that had no military significance.

Regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Russia fired six missiles at Dnipro and the surrounding area, three of which were shot down by air defence systems, and the others hit railway infrastructure, an industrial site and the garage in the city.

Ukrainian defence ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk described Russia’s intensification of long-range strikes on his country’s cities as “missile terrorism against the civilian population of Ukraine, to break its spirit and destroy Ukrainians’ unity”.

Moscow claims to be targeting only military sites in what it calls a “special operation” to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine – most of whom live in the eastern and southern areas of the country most severely devastated by an invasion that has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions.

“The Ukrainian side can end all this by the end of today, they just have to order nationalist units to lay down their arms, order the Ukrainian military to lay down their arms and fulfil the conditions set by the Russian Federation … The rest is up to the Ukrainian head of state, who should think this over,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

As relations between Moscow and EU and Nato members continue to crumble, the US unveiled sanctions on more than 100 targets and banned the import of new Russian gold on Tuesday, and Bulgaria expelled 70 Russian diplomats.