During his speech at the Caspian Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the missile strike on a shopping centre in Ukraine’s Kremenchuk. The president said that the Russian army “does not strike any civilian targets.”
“There was no terrorist attack. They store weapons, multiple rocket launchers, artillery and heavy equipment in residential districts. Obviously, we do not just strike empty fields. This is usually done as a result of reconnaissance efforts. I am confident that in this case, it’s the same thing. They are hiding equipment, especially Western equipment, in hangars of some sort, markets, factories, workshops, where they do maintenance works and repair the equipment.
The Russian army does not strike any civilian targets. There is no need.
We have every opportunity to determine the location of our targets and reach those targets with modern high-precision long-range weapons,” he stated.
In his address on Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed a video that he said pictured the moment of the missile strike on the Amstor shopping centre in Kremenchuk, where at least 18 people were killed. The Russian military deliberately targeted the coordinates of the shopping centre “to kill as many people as possible in a peaceful city, in a regular shopping mall,” Zelensky said.
The Russian Defence Ministry earlier claimed that the shopping centre was not operational and that the missiles targeted “a warehouse with foreign ammunition at the Kremenchuk automobile plant.” According to the ministry, the warehouse stored “Western-produced ammunition” that was meant to be transported to the Ukrainian military units in Donbas.
As a result of the missile strike on the Amstor shopping centre in Kremenchuk, at least 18 people were killed, head of the Poltava regional administration Dmytro Lunin said. According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, 59 people sought medical attention following the strike, 25 were hospitalised, and 36 are considered missing.
Kremenchuk Mayor Vitalii Maletskyi declared a three-day mourning period to honour the people killed in the strike.
