It’s a “hell of fire and smoke” which fell on Monday on the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk, 330 km southeast of kyiv, says Paolo Brera, the correspondent in Ukraine for the Italian daily The Republic. A Russian missile strike left at least 16 dead and 59 injured according to the authorities who fear an even heavier toll in the hours to come, reports the BBC.
“Indiscriminate attacks against innocent civilians constitute a war crime”the G7 leaders said in the evening from their summit in southern Germany, in a statement that “solemnly condemns the heinous attack” and ensures that Vladimir Putin will have to “accountable”. “In four months of conflict characterized by indiscriminate violence, this strike is another striking and bloody example” of “Russia’s willingness to target civilians […] as they go about their daily business”estimates the New York Times.
Kremenchuk is located “in the central Poltava region, hundreds of kilometers from the front line”remarks for its part the Russian independent site Jellyfish. For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the targeted shopping center represented neither “a danger” in “a strategic interest for the Russian army”.
Targeting “error” or deliberate act?
If the Ukrainian authorities accuse Moscow of having deliberately targeted civilians, the correspondent of The Republic believes that it could be a “awful mistake” targeting because next to the Amstor shopping center is a gigantic factory, the Kredmash. “Officially it is a civilian factory but the Russians probably think that with the war it was converted by the army” Ukrainian, he notes.
“Hard to believe the mall attack was an accident,” considers for its part the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. “Russians know how to avoid hitting malls. Russia has signed the Geneva Conventions which prohibit attacks deliberately targeting civilians and civilian structures. But Mr. Putin doesn’t care, and he thinks he’ll get away with it if he can defeat Ukraine or force it to submit to his peace terms.”write the journalists.
A senior US defense official interviewed by the Washington Post specifies that this bombing comes as 60 missile strikes were launched on Ukraine over the weekend. “The Pentagon does not know exactly why Russia has accelerated its rate of strikes”he points out. But it is possible that Moscow is seeking to protest the fact that the United States has delivered M142 high mobility artillery rocket systems to Ukraine.
Le Moscow Times remarks on his side that the bombing of the Amstor shopping center occurs “just as the G7 leaders are meeting” in Germany to discuss, among other things, “new punitive measures against Moscow”. The German Tabloid Bild sees even in this new strike against Ukraine “Putin’s bloody salute to the top of the powerful”.