As rescuers dig for survivors in the bombarded Kremenchuk shopping centre, terrified shoppers recall the moment missiles landed on the mall as more than 1,000 people were inside.
Before the invasion, the central Ukrainian city had a population of 217,000 and was an important industrial site. The shopping centre was a busy and popular location in the heart of the city.
Today it’s a shell of itself. According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, 60 per cent of the shopping centre was damaged leaving 18 dead, 59 injured and 31 people still missing after the Monday afternoon strike. Images of the complex before the attack show a large modern mall, but photos coming from the aftermath show what survivors have described as “hell.”
One patient in Kremenchuk hospital's general ward, Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, said she was shopping at an electronics store with her husband, Mykola, when the blast threw her into the air.
“I flew head first and splinters hit my body. The whole place was collapsing. Then I landed on the floor and I don’t know if I was conscious or unconscious,” she said, adding she had broken her arm and split her head open.
“It was hell,” added Mykola, 45, blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around his head.
A 21-year-old, Yulia who started working at the mall on the day of the attack was covered with deep cuts at the hospital.
Outside the hospital, a small group of mall workers were filled with worry and grief, but also relief. Hearing an air-raid siren, they had made their way to a nearby basement when the missiles struck, said Roman, 28, who asked to be identified by only one name.
He added that many others had stayed inside as the mall’s management had three days ago allowed shops to remain open during air raid sirens. Many Ukrainians have stopped reacting to the now regular warning sirens as strikes have been occurring less frequently outside of Ukraine's battle-torn east.
Back in the intensive-care ward, Yulia, a 21-year-old woman covered with deep cuts, said Monday was her first day working in one of the stores in the mall.
Russia on Tuesday denied hitting a shopping mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk with missiles, saying that it had struck a nearby depot of U.S. and European arms triggering an explosion which ignited a fire in the mall.
“In Kremenchuk, Russian forces struck a weapons depot storing arms received from the United States and Europe with high-precision air-based weapons,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a daily statement on the war.
“The detonation of stored ammunition for western weapons caused a fire in a non-functioning shopping centre located next to the depot,” it added.
