Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Monday’s missile strike on a shopping centre in central city of Kremenchuk as a “brazen terrorist act”, as the death toll rose to 13.
Zelensky was speaking after reports of two other strikes in the east of the country Monday that killed at least 12 civilians in all, as officials there accused Moscow of deliberately targetting civilians.
“The Russian strike today on the shopping centre in Kremenchuk is one of the most brazen terrorist acts in European history,” Zelensky said in his evening broadcast posted on Telegram.
“A peaceful town, an ordinary shopping centre — women, children ordinary civilians inside.”
Earlier, Ukraine’s defence ministry said the Kremenchuk strike had been deliberately timed to coincide with the mall’s busiest hours and cause the maximum number of victims.
The attack already brought condemnation from the United Nations and world leaders.
In separate attacks Monday, Russian rockets killed at least eight civilians in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk as they were out collecting water, said the governor of Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday.
And a strike in Kharkiv killed four people and wounded 19 others, including four children, said Oleg Synegubov, the head of Kharkiv’s regional administration.
“The enemy is deliberately terrorising the civilian population,” he said in a statement on Telegram.