War in Ukraine
UN Security Council meets over Russian strikes on civilian targets
Shelling across Kyiv, missile attack on mall far from any front line set to take spotlight
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UNITED NATIONS/ KREMENCHUK • An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council over Russian strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine was set to be held to cast a spotlight on a missile attack on a shopping mall in central Ukraine this week.
The "shelling all over Kyiv" on Sunday, which hit a residential complex, would also be on the agenda, said a spokesman for the Albanian mission, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council where Moscow wields a veto.
The meeting, scheduled to take place at 3am Singapore time today, was convened at the request of Ukraine, following the attack on the mall in the central city of Kremenchuk far from any front line.
Exhausted firefighters searched yesterday for survivors in the rubble of the shopping centre, where the authorities said 36 people were still missing after the Russian missile strike that killed at least 18.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in "one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history".
Russia's Defence Ministry said its missiles had struck an arms depot storing Western weapons, which exploded, causing the blaze that spread to the nearby mall, which it described as disused and empty. Kyiv said there was no military target in the area, including at a nearby factory that was also hit.
Relatives of the missing in Kremenchuk were lined up yesterday at a hotel across the street from the wreckage of the mall, where rescue workers had set up a base.
Exhausted firefighters sat on a kerb after a night battling the blaze and searching for survivors, mostly in vain. Mr Oleksandr, wetting his face from a water bottle on a bench, said his team had worked all night picking through the rubble. "We pulled out five bodies. We didn't find anybody alive," he said.
Russia denies intentionally targeting civilians in its "special military operation" which began on Feb 24 and has destroyed cities, killed thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.
The attack on Kremenchuk, which lies about 330km from Kyiv, comes after days of increasing Russian missile strikes far from the front line, including the first attacks on the capital Kyiv for weeks.
Moscow has also stepped up shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, where Russian troops were pushed back in a counter-offensive last month. The Kharkiv governor said five were killed and 22 wounded in shelling on Monday that hit targets including apartment buildings and a school.
On the battlefields of the Donbas region, Ukraine endured another tough day following last week's loss of the now-ruined city of Sievierodonetsk. Russian forces are trying to storm Lysychansk, across the Siverskyi Donets River from Sievierodonetsk, to complete their capture of Luhansk province, one of two eastern regions that Moscow aims to conquer on behalf of separatist proxies.
It was hell, says survivor of Russian attack on mall
KREMENCHUK • In a central Ukrainian intensive-care ward, five people are crammed into a room, their wounds bound up in bloodied bandages. A dead body lies on a stretcher outside, covered in a blanket.
This is the aftermath of a missile strike on a busy shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk, south-east of Kyiv, on Monday, an attack one of the patients described as "hell".
"This is the sixth time the city has been bombed" since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb 24, said Dr Oleksandr Kovalenko, deputy director of the surgery department at Kremenchuk's public hospital. "But never before did it hit so many people."
One patient in the hospital's general ward, Ms Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, said she was shopping at an electronics store with her husband Mykola when the blast threw her into the air.
"I flew head first and splinters hit my body. The whole place was collapsing. Then I landed on the floor and I don't know if I was conscious or unconscious," she said, adding that she had broken her arm and split her head open.
"It was hell," added her husband, 45, blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around his head.
Mr Roman, 28, a worker at the mall who asked to be identified by only one name, said he and other workers had made their way to a nearby basement when the missiles struck, after hearing an air-raid siren.
Many others had stayed inside as the mall's management had just three days ago allowed shops to remain open during air raid sirens, he added.
REUTERS
The advances in Luhansk have given Moscow its biggest victories in weeks. But Ukraine still hopes to turn the tide with a counterattack once Moscow exhausts its invading forces in costly battles that yield slow gains. Kyiv has begun to receive more advanced Western weapons, including rockets that can hit targets far behind the front.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking during a visit to Turkmenistan, said yesterday that the more Western countries send weapons to Ukraine, the longer the conflict will last.
Meanwhile, NBC News reported that United States President Joe Biden plans to announce an extension of some of the increased US troop presence in Ukraine's neighbour Poland and changes to US deployments in several Baltic nations that he authorised ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS