A Russian missile strike hit a crowded shopping center with over 1,000 civilians in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
At least 20 people were killed and 50 injured in the Russian missile strike, with 25 of the injured in serious condition, Ukrainian state media outlet Ukrinform reported, citing deputy head of the President's Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
"Russian forces fired rockets at the shopping center, where there were more than a thousand civilians. The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire, the number of victims is impossible to imagine," Zelensky said in a Telegram post.
"Russian forces fired rockets at the shopping center, where there were more than a thousand civilians."
President Volodymyr Zelensky
According to Zelensky, the building posed "no danger to the Russian army, no strategic value." "Russia continues to place its powerlessness on ordinary citizens. It is useless to hope for adequacy and humanity on its part," Zelensky wrote.
City mayor Vitaliy Meletskiy said the strike had caused deaths and injuries but did not provide specific figures.
"Doctors, rescuers and law enforcement officers are currently working on the scene. The number of victims is being clarified," Poltava Regional Military Administration Dmytro Lunin said in a Telegram post.
Lunin called the rocket attack on the mall in Kremenchuk a crime against humanity, "an undisguised and cynical act of terror against the civilian population."
Kremenchuk, an industrial city of 217,000 before Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine, is the site of Ukraine's biggest oil refinery.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which denies deliberately targeting civilians.
Russia must answer for a deadly missile strike on a crowded Ukrainian shopping center on Monday, France's Foreign Ministry said, condemning the attack.
"Russia must answer for these acts. France supports the fight against impunity in Ukraine," the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman said in a statement.
More weapons needed
"We need more weapons to protect our people, we need missile defenses," Andriy Yermak, head of the president's office, said.
Vadym Denysenko, an interior ministry adviser, said Russia could have had three motives for the attack.
"The first, undoubtedly, is to sow panic, the second is to... destroy our infrastructure, and the third is to... raise the stakes to get the civilized west to sit down again at the table for talks," he said.
Russia, which captured Ukraine's eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk over the weekend after a weeks-long assault, has stepped up missile strikes on targets across Ukraine in recent days.
Missiles hit an apartment block and landed close to a kindergarten in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, killing one person and wounding several more people.
Jerusalem Post Staff and Reuters contributed to this report.