At least 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded after Russian drones struck a shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called an “absolute Russian atrocity” carried out in his hometown.
Regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said in the early hours of Saturday that the death toll had climbed to 16, with nine people still listed as missing, including two children, as rescue crews continued clearing rubble at the site. Twenty-two children were among the wounded, and 29 people were in serious condition, including five children, Hanzha said.
Zelenskiy said a second drone struck the shopping centre roughly half an hour after the first hit, describing it as a deliberate attempt to target emergency responders arriving at the scene. “An absolute Russian atrocity. They’re just monsters. We will definitely respond,” he said in an evening video address, calling such strikes “nothing less than terrorist acts.”
Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defence council, said stores inside the centre caught fire and that smoke filled the building as people rushed to evacuate. Emergency crews worked through the night searching for survivors trapped in the wreckage.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, condemned the strike as “terror by design” and said the bloc would pursue its most far-reaching package of Russia sanctions since the war began. A separate strike in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region on Friday killed four more people, including three minors, Interior Minister Ivan Vygivsky said.
Russian strikes continued into Saturday, killing at least two more people, officials said. One person was killed at a warehouse in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, while a Russian drone killed a man and wounded four others in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
The attack came a day after Russian missiles and drones struck Kyiv overnight, and follows a pattern of intensified aerial strikes on Ukrainian cities as the war approaches its four-and-a-half-year mark. The United Nations said Kyiv was among the hardest-hit Ukrainian cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured that month alone.
Leaders from the Coalition of the Willing are due to meet Monday, coinciding with Ukraine’s independence day, to reaffirm support for Kyiv, co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
