Zelensky vows response after Russian strike on shopping mall kills 16

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to respond to a brutal Russian “double-tap” strike on a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih, central Ukraine, that killed at least 16 people.

Rescuers have been combing through rubble from Friday’s attack on Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown, which has been targeted multiple times during the four-year war.

The drone attack, which Zelensky condemned as “cowardly,” came as Ukraine sustains rising civilian casualties due to a critical shortage of US-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the only system capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.

“The attack drones struck in two waves: half an hour after the first strike and the resulting fire, there was a second strike targeting emergency responders,” Zelensky posted on Telegram.

He warned that Ukraine “will definitely respond” to the attack.

Footage geolocated by CNN shows a drone hitting a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih, causing a fireball to erupt into the sky as it explodes, all while smoke from an apparent earlier strike is still visible.

Prosecutor General's Office/Handout/Reuters

Smoke filled the inside of the shopping center as people hurriedly tried to leave, videos filmed at the scene show. Stores inside the shopping center caught fire, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defense council.

Among the 130 wounded, at least 29 are in serious condition, Vilkul said, including a 14-year-old girl with a traumatic brain injury and four other children.

On Saturday he warned citizens against visiting shopping centers that are not equipped with shelters, citing intelligence reports that further strikes on such locations are possible.

He urged the public to seek shelter promptly when air-raid alarms are heard, adding that Friday’s siren sounded for 20 minutes before the explosion occurred: “But the shops were open, people were inside them, and very few went to take shelter,” Vilkul said.

The strike on the mall happened a day after Russia carried out a large attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, killing at least 17 people, according to Ukraine.

Russia has continued its attacks across Ukraine over the past 24 hours, with strikes reported in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Sumy, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odesa. At least nine more people have been killed.

Ukrainian forces struck two targets in Russia’s Samara Oblast region overnight - the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery and an Ozon logistics hub, which is a competitor to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, a frequent target in recent weeks as Kyiv brings the war to Russian soil.

Russia’s defense ministry said it intercepted more than 450 Ukrainian drones, while Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the Krasnodar Krai region, said two children were killed.

Both sides have stepped up their air campaigns as the front lines remain largely static, locked in a slow-moving, deadly stalemate.

Moscow is yet to comment on the attack on the shopping mall directly, but in an interview published on Saturday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine’s leaders had “themselves let the genie out of the bottle when they started targeting our civilian enterprises.”

“They publicly declared their aim: to destroy the Russian economy. Well then – now you’ll get a response,” he said in an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.

Ukraine sees strikes on facilities like Ozon as a legitimate war of undermining Moscow’s war driven economy.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha again urged allies to provide more missile interceptors and impose additional sanctions on Russia’s military-industrial complex.

“Russia must be denied both the ability to produce these means of terror and the ability to use them,” he said.

CNN’s Michael Rios, Victoria Butenko and Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report.

乌克兰总统泽连斯基誓言要对俄罗斯在乌克兰中部克里维里赫一家购物中心发动的残酷“双击”袭击作出回应，该袭击造成至少 16 人死亡。

救援人员一直在清理周五袭击克里维里赫（泽连斯基的家乡）的废墟，克里维里赫在四年战争期间曾多次成为袭击目标。

泽连斯基谴责此次无人机袭击是“懦弱的”，而此时乌克兰正因美国制造的“爱国者”防空拦截器严重短缺而遭受越来越多的平民伤亡，“爱国者”是唯一能够击落弹道导弹的系统。

泽连斯基在 Telegram 上发帖称：“攻击无人机分两波发动袭击：第一次袭击造成火灾半小时后，第二次袭击的目标是应急人员。”

他警告说，乌克兰“一定会对这次袭击作出回应”。

CNN发布的视频显示，一架无人机撞击了克里维里赫的一家购物中心，爆炸时火球冲天而起，与此同时，之前疑似袭击造成的烟雾仍然可见。

总检察长办公室/供图/路透社

现场拍摄的视频显示，购物中心内浓烟弥漫，人们匆忙逃离。市国防委员会主席奥列克桑德·维尔库尔表示，购物中心内的商店起火了。

维尔库尔表示，在130名伤者中，至少有29人伤势严重，其中包括一名遭受创伤性脑损伤的14岁女孩和另外四名儿童。

周六，他警告市民不要前往没有防空洞的购物中心，并援引情报报告称，此类地点可能再次遭到袭击。

维尔库尔敦促公众在听到空袭警报时立即寻找掩体，并补充说，周五的警报响了 20 分钟后爆炸才发生：“但商店都开着，人们都在里面，很少有人去躲避，”维尔库尔说。

据乌克兰方面称，袭击购物中心的前一天，俄罗斯对基辅及其周边地区发动了大规模袭击，造成至少 17 人死亡。

过去24小时内，俄罗斯继续在乌克兰境内发动袭击，据报道，扎波罗热、赫尔松、苏梅、顿涅茨克、哈尔科夫和敖德萨等地均遭到空袭。至少又有9人丧生。

乌克兰军队连夜袭击了俄罗斯萨马拉州的两个目标——新库比雪夫斯克炼油厂和 Ozon 物流中心。Ozon 物流中心是俄罗斯电子商务巨头 Wildberries 的竞争对手，而 Wildberries 近几周来一直是基辅将战火蔓延到俄罗斯领土上的常见目标。

俄罗斯国防部称拦截了 450 多架乌克兰无人机，而克拉斯诺达尔边疆区州长韦尼亚明·孔德拉季耶夫表示，两名儿童丧生。

由于前线基本保持不变，陷入了缓慢而致命的僵局，双方都加强了空袭行动。

莫斯科方面尚未就购物中心袭击事件直接发表评论，但俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京在周六发表的一次采访中表示，乌克兰领导人“在开始袭击我们的民用企业时，就等于自己打开了潘多拉的魔盒”。

“他们公开宣称他们的目标：摧毁俄罗斯经济。好，现在你们就等着瞧吧，”他在接受俄罗斯记者帕维尔·扎鲁宾采访时说道。

乌克兰认为对 Ozon 等设施的袭击是破坏莫斯科以战争为驱动的经济的合法战争。

乌克兰外交部长安德烈·西比哈再次敦促盟友提供更多导弹拦截器，并对俄罗斯军工联合体实施更多制裁。

他说：“必须剥夺俄罗斯生产和使用这些恐怖手段的能力。”

美国有线电视新闻网 (CNN) 的迈克尔·里奥斯 (Michael Rios)、维多利亚·布滕科 (Victoria Butenko) 和达里亚·塔拉索瓦-马基纳 (Daria Tarasova-Markina) 对本报告做出了贡献。