G7 leaders declare that Putin will be held accountable
The West and the United Nations have both sharply condemned Monday’s Russian missile attack on a busy shopping mall in central Ukraine. It has been deemed a war crime by the G7 leaders, and they have vowed to hold President Putin responsible.
Firefighters and soldiers have been looking for survivors in the building’s wreckage in Kremenchuk since the incident, which is believed to have left at least 18 people dead and numerous others injured. According to authorities, more than 30 persons are missing.
Actress Mary Mara 61 of “Ray Donovan” is believed to have drowned
G7 leaders declare that Putin will be held accountable
Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, examined the area and stated that the bombing of the “civilian infrastructure” posed “a question of crimes against humanity.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, demanded on Tuesday that Russia be labeled a “state sponsor of terrorism.” In the wake of the horrific blast, he referred to Russia as the “biggest terrorist organization” in the world on Monday. He claimed that when two Russian missiles struck the structure, there were more than 1,000 people inside.
At a conference in Germany, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies described the act as “abominable.”
A war crime is committed when innocent persons are targeted without cause. They said in an united statement that was tweeted by the German G7 presidency, “Russian President Putin and those accountable will be held to account.
The UN Security Council convened an extraordinary meeting in New York to discuss the incident at Ukraine’s request. According to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, the strike was “deplorable,” and civilian infrastructure “should never ever be targeted.”
No danger to the Russian troops,
According to Dmytro Lunin, the governor of the Poltava area, at least 18 people were murdered, 25 were hospitalized, and about 36 were still missing in Kremenchuk on Tuesday. Two more people have died than were reported dead the previous night on Monday, and more bodies could still be discovered. On Monday, the emergency services reported that 59 individuals had been hurt.
The shopping center, according to President Zelenskyy, posed “no threat to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value.” The sabotage of “people’s attempts to live a normal life, which make the invaders so angry,” he claimed, was done by Russia.
He claimed that it looked Russian military had targeted the shopping center on purpose in his evening address. One of the most daring terrorist strikes in European history, he said, was the Russian attack on a mall in Kremenchuk today.
The incident “struck a fairly populated place, which is absolutely certain not to have any links to the military forces,” Kremenchuk Mayor Vitaliy Maletskiy stated on Facebook.
More than 200 kilometers away from the eastern front line, Kremenchuk is located approximately 330 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
The missile attack on Kremenchuk took place as the major economies of the world readied fresh sanctions against Russia, including a price restriction on oil and heavier taxes on products. G7 leaders also promised to continue supporting Ukraine “for as long as necessary.”
On Tuesday, the G7 leaders will travel from Bavaria to Madrid for a NATO summit, which will be dominated by Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. The plans for a significant expansion in fast reaction forces on NATO’s eastern flank, from the present 40,000 to 300,000, were unveiled by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.
Wave of Russian attacks hits civilians
Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Tuesday that “high precision” missiles had struck warehouses stocking Western-supplied weapons, and that explosions had set fire to a nearby, disused shopping centre that it said was “closed”.
A barrister who is working with the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office to investigate possible war crimes, refuted claims that a military object was located nearby.
In an earlier, initial Russian government comment on the Kremenchuk missile strike, UN representative Dmitry Polyanskiy alleged multiple inconsistencies that he didn’t specify, claiming on Twitter that the incident was a “provocation” by Ukraine. He later retweeted a post from another official Russian organisation appearing to hint the attack had been staged.
Russia has systematically denied it targets civilian infrastructure, even though Russian attacks have hit other shopping centres, theatres, hospitals, kindergartens and apartment buildings — killing and injuring thousands of people.
The attack on Kremenchuk was one of several launched by Moscow’s forces across Ukraine to have hit civilians since the weekend:
- Russian forces struck the Black Sea city of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region on Tuesday, damaging apartment buildings and killing two, including a 6-year-old child. A further six people, four of them children, were wounded. One of them, a 3-month-old baby, is in a coma, according to local officials.
- At least eight were killed and 21 wounded in a Russian bombardment while collecting water in the eastern city of Lysychansk on Monday, regional authorities said.
- In nearby Sloviansk — potentially the next major battleground — the mayor said Russian forces fired cluster munitions, including one that hit a residential neighborhood. Authorities said the number of victims had yet to be confirmed. AP reported seeing the body of one man who was killed.
- Also on Monday, Russian forces shelled central districts of Kharkiv, hitting apartment buildings and a primary school and killing five people and wounding 22, the regional governor said. Five children were among the injured, he added.
- The same day, authorities said six people were injured including a child in a missile strike in the Odesa region, in southern Ukraine, that destroyed residential buildings and caused a fire.
- These attacks follow a barrage of missiles that struck Kyiv on Sunday, killing at least one civilian and injuring several in a residential area.
Ukraine’s air force command said the shopping centre in Kremenchuk was hit by two long-range X-22 missiles fired from Tu-22M3 bombers that flew from Shaykovka airfield in Russia’s Kaluga region. Officials said a sports arena in the city was also hit.
Russia has increasingly used long-range bombers in the war. The strike on Kremenchuk echoed earlier attacks that caused large numbers of civilian casualties — such as one in March on a Mariupol theatre where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that left at least 59 people dead.