Damaged shopping center after rocket attack in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that Russia “cannot and must not win” the war in Ukraine, as its horrific account was in full view the day after a Russian missile struck a mall, killing 18 people. Speaking at the end of the G7 summit in Germany, Macron said the seven industrialized democracies would support Ukraine and maintain sanctions against Russia “as long as necessary and with the necessary intensity.” He added: “Russia can not and should not win.” The comments came as rescuers searched the charred wreckage of the mall, looking for more victims of what the Ukrainian president described as “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and employees were inside the mall in Kremenchuk. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames sprang from the wreckage as emergency crews combed through broken metal and concrete for the victims. Drones swirled overhead, clouds of dark smoke still rising from the rubble several hours after the fire was extinguished. The death toll rose as rescuers passed through the rubble. The regional governor, Dmitry Lunin, said at least 18 people had been killed and another 59 had sought medical help, 25 of whom had been treated. The area declared a day of mourning on Tuesday for the victims of the attack. “We are working to dismantle the construction so that machinery can be brought in there, as the metal elements are very heavy and large and it is impossible to disassemble them by hand,” said Volodymyr Hychkan, an emergency services official. Ukraine’s attorney general, Iryna Venediktova, who is leading the investigation into possible war crimes, said the rocket attack was one of Russia’s “crimes against humanity”, noting that the Russian military was “systematically bombing civilian infrastructure”. in order to scare people. we kill people to bring terror to our cities and villages. “ Venediktova stressed the need for Ukrainians across the country to remain vigilant, adding that they would have to wait for a similar strike “every minute”. Wayne Jordash, a British lawyer working with the Venediktova bureau to investigate possible war crimes, has denied allegations that a factory near the mall was a military facility. “The first indications are that the factory that was hit is a road factory, not a military target,” Jordash said. “We need to find out if there are any military targets nearby, and the first indication, as I say, is that there are no military targets nearby.” At Ukraine’s request, the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting in New York on Tuesday to discuss the attack. In the Russian government’s first comment on the rocket attack, the country’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, claimed multiple inconsistencies, claiming on Twitter that the incident was provoked by Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian infrastructure, although Russian attacks hit other malls, theaters, hospitals, kindergartens and apartment buildings during the four-month war. On Tuesday, Russian forces struck the Black Sea city of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region, damaging apartment buildings and killing two people, including a 6-year-old boy. Six other people, including four children, were injured. One of them, a 3-month-old baby, is in a coma, according to local officials. The Kremenchuk rocket attack came as Western leaders vowed to continue supporting Ukraine, and the world’s major economies prepared new sanctions against Russia, including a cap on oil prices and higher tariffs on goods. G-7 leaders condemned the attack in a statement late Monday, saying “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians are a war crime,” noting that “Russian President Putin and those in charge will be held accountable.” The Russian strike echoed previous attacks that resulted in heavy civilian casualties – one in March at a Mariupol theater where many civilians had taken refuge, killing about 600, and another in April at a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that killed at least 59 people. Zelensky said the mall posed “no threat to the Russian military” and “has no strategic value.” He accused Russia of sabotaging “the efforts of the people to live a normal life, which infuriates the conquerors so much.” In his overnight speech, he said Russian forces had deliberately targeted the mall in “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history,” denouncing Russia as “the largest terrorist organization in the world.” Russia is increasingly using long-range bombers in the war. Ukrainian officials say Russian Tu-22M3 bombers flying over Russia’s western Kursk region have fired rockets, one at a mall and another at a sports arena in Kremenchuk. The United States seemed ready to respond to Zelensky’s call for more air defense systems, and NATO planned to increase the size of its rapid reaction force almost eightfold – to 300,000 troops. The attack on Kremenchuk coincided with a full-scale Russian attack on the last Ukrainian fortress in the eastern Ukrainian province of Luhansk, “firing” on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, according to the local governor. At least eight people were killed and more than 20 were injured in Lysychansk when Russian rockets hit an area where a crowd had gathered to fetch water from a tank, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said. The barrage was part of an intensified attack by Russian forces aimed at removing the eastern Donbass region from Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Russian army and its local separatist allies forced Ukrainian government troops to withdraw from the neighboring city of Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk. West of Lysychansk on Monday, the mayor of the town of Sloviansk – possibly the next major battlefield – said Russian forces fired cluster munitions, including one that struck a residential neighborhood. Authorities say the number of victims has not yet been confirmed. The Associated Press saw a fatality: A man’s body was curved over a car door frame, with his blood collecting on the ground from injuries to his chest and head. The blast shattered most windows in nearby apartment buildings and cars parked below, filling the ground with broken windows. “Everything has been destroyed,” said resident Valentina Vitkovska, in tears as she spoke of the blast. “We are the only people living in this part of the building. There is no power. “I can not even call to tell others what had happened to us.”
