This is the moment a shopping mall in Kyiv was wiped out by a Russian missile strike overnight, leaving at least eight people dead as Vladimir Putin’s men step up their bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
Footage released by the Russian Ministry of Defence showed a missile slamming into the Sport Life gym outside the Retroville mall late Sunday, flattening the building and leaving the mall heavily damaged.
At least eight civilians were killed in the strike, according to Ukrainian police, with dozens more feared trapped in the rubble. It is not clear exactly what kind of missile was used, but the blast was powerful enough to blow out all the windows at the from of the mall and to flip over and incinerate vehicles in the car park.
Russia’s military claimed that Ukrainian missile launchers were being stored near the mall, though there was no word from the Ukrainian military about whether its forces were present at the time of the strike.
It came as Pentagon officials said Russia is shelling Ukraine with dozens of rockets each day in a ‘near-desperate’ attempt to swing the tide of war in their favour and gain leverage in negotiations. British intelligence says the Russian advance in Kyiv has stalled, and is actually being repulsed in areas to the north-west.
Russia is expending ‘a lot of munitions’ in an effort to bomb Ukraine into submission, a senior US defence official said today, but still as ‘a significant majority’ of ballistic missiles and more than half of its cruise missiles available – meaning the strikes will continue for some time.
Russia has released footage of an overnight missile strike on a shopping mall near Kyiv, which Ukraine says killed at least eight civilians and reduced part of the building to rubble
Footage shows a missile slamming down on the Sport Life gym complex next to the Retroville shopping mall, levelling the building which Russia said had been used to store military vehicles
Russian airstrikes destroyed the ‘Retroville’ shopping mall in the north of Kyiv on Monday, killing at least eight people and leaving others buried in the rubble
A burned-out car sits in what used to be the parking lot outside a Ukrainian shopping mall in the northern suburbs of Kyiv
The ruins of Sport Life gym complex outside the Retroville shopping centre is seen near Kyiv after being blown up by Russia
A man picks his way through the wreckage of cars and a gym in the northern Kyiv suburb of Podilskyi after it was destroyed in a Russian air strike
Ukrainian servicemen search through rubble inside the Retroville shopping mall after a Russian attack in northwest of Kyiv
Emergency workers search through the rubble of a destroyed shopping mall in northern Kyiv after it was bombed by Russia
Russia also intensified its efforts to bomb the Black Sea port city of Mariupol into submission today, after the city rejected an offer of surrender in return for the evacuation of civilians – saying that promises of safety for its fighters couldn’t be trusted, and that they intended to fight ‘to the last man’.
Ukrainian authorities also said Russia shelled a chemical plant in northeastern Ukraine, sending toxic ammonia leaking into the air, and hit a military training base in the west with cruise missiles.
The encircled southern city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov has seen some of the worst horrors of the war, under Russian pounding for more than three weeks, in what Ukrainian and Western officials have branded a war crime.
Hours before Russia’s offer to open corridors out of the city in return for the capitulation of its defenders, an art school where some 400 people were taking shelter was hit by an airstrike, according to Ukrainian officials.
‘They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived,’ Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In a video address, he vowed that Ukraine would ‘shoot down the pilot who dropped that bomb.’
Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev had offered two corridors – one heading east toward Russia, the other west to other parts of Ukraine – in return for Mariupol’s surrender. He did not say what Russia would do if the offer was rejected.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said authorities in Mariupol could face a military tribunal if they sided with what it described as ‘bandits,’ the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Ukrainian officials rejected the proposal even before Russia’s deadline of 5 a.m. Moscow time for a response came and went.
‘There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms,’ Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda.
A shopping mall in northern Kyiv was struck in the early hours of Monday, killing at least eight people. But successful Ukrainian counter-attacks were underway to the west of the city, as Makariv was re-captured
An overhead view shows the extent of the devastation at the Retroville shopping mall to the north of Kyiv on Monday
The ruins of a truck parked near the site of a Russian airstrike on a mall in northern Kyiv is seen after the explosion
The ruins of a Ukrainian shopping mall in the northern outskirts of Kyiv is pictured on Monday morning, after it was hit by Russian missiles in the early hours
Rescuers work at the site of the shopping mall damaged by an airstrike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv this morning
People gather amid the destruction caused after shelling of a shopping center, in Kyiv, Ukraine
The strike on the art school was the second time in less than a week that officials reported an attack on a public building where Mariupol residents had taken shelter. On Wednesday, an airstrike devastated a theater where more than 1,000 people were believed to be sheltering. At least 130 people were reported rescued Friday, but there has been no update since then.
Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people have died in the siege, with some buried in mass graves.
City officials and aid groups say Russian bombardment has cut off Mariupol’s electricity, water and food supplies and severed its communications with the outside world, plunging the remaining residents into a chaotic fight for survival.
‘What’s happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime,’ EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
Mariupol had a prewar population of about 430,000. About a quarter were believed to have left in the opening days of the war, and tens of thousands got out over the past week by way of a humanitarian corridor, though other attempts have been thwarted by the bombardment.
In the Black Sea port city of Odesa, authorities said Russian forces damaged civilian houses in a strike Monday. The city council said no one was killed.
Russia’s invasion has driven nearly 3.4 million people from Ukraine, according to the United Nations. The U.N. has confirmed over 900 civilian deaths but said the actual toll is probably much higher. Estimates of Russian deaths vary, but even conservative figures are in the low thousands.
Some who were able to escape Mariupol tearfully hugged relatives as they arrived by train Sunday in Lviv in western Ukraine.
‘Battles took place over every street. Every house became a target,’ said Olga Nikitina, who was embraced by her brother as she got off the train. ‘Gunfire blew out the windows. The apartment was below freezing.’
Mariupol is a key Russian target because its fall would allow Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine to link up. Its capture would also help Russia establish a land bridge to Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine in 2014.
More than three weeks into the invasion, the two sides seem to be trying to wear each other down, experts say, with Russian forces launching long-range missiles at cities and military bases as Ukrainian forces carry out hit-and-run attacks.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces on the ground are ‘essentially stalled.’
At least one person has been injured after protesters came under fire by Russian troops in the occupied city of Kherson, according to local reports, with images from the scene showing a man bleeding heavily from his leg (above)
Russian troops opened fire on protesters with guns and stun grenades, according to local media, after crowds gathered to demonstrate against the occupation of their city
Video captured the moment several blasts hit the crowd (left and right), apparently from stun grenades, sending people running for cover and leaving at least one man wounded
Protesters run from the sounds of gunfire and the bang of stun grenades as local media reports Russian forces opened fire on a demonstration happening in the city of Kherson
Talks between Russia and Ukraine have continued by video conference but failed to bridge the chasm between the two sides, with Russia demanding Ukraine disarm and declare itself neutral and Ukraine saying Russian forces must withdraw from the whole country.
Ukrainian delegation member Davyd Arakhamia told Ukrainska Pravda that there was a 90-minute session between top negotiators Monday morning, to be followed by a full day of talks in various working groups.
U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to talk Monday with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Britain about the war. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that relations with the U.S. are ‘on the verge of a breach,’ citing ‘unacceptable statements’ by Biden about Putin – an apparent reference to the American calling the Russian a ‘war criminal.’
In Ukraine’s major cities, hundreds of men, women and children have been killed in Russian attacks.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said a Russian shell struck a chemical plant outside the eastern city of Sumy just after 3 a.m. Monday, causing a leak in a 50-ton tank of ammonia that took hours to contain.
Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed the leak was a ‘planned provocation’ by Ukrainian forces to falsely accuse Russia of a chemical attack.
Konashenkov also said an overnight cruise missile strike hit a military training center in the Rivne region of western Ukraine. He said 80 foreign and Ukrainian troops were killed, though the figure could not be independently confirmed.
Britain’s defense ministry said that Ukrainian resistance had kept the bulk of Russian forces more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the city center, but that Kyiv ‘remains Russia’s primary military objective.’
Russian troops are shelling Kyiv for a fourth week now and are trying to surround the capital, which had nearly 3 million people before the war. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a curfew extending from Monday evening through Wednesday morning.
A cluster of villages on Kyiv’s northwest edge, including Irpin and Bucha, have been all but cut off by Russian forces and are on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe, regional officials said. Associated Press journalists who were in the area a week ago saw bodies in a park.
In another worrying development, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said radiation monitors around the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, the site in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown, have stopped working.
The agency said that problem, and a lack of firefighters to protect the area’s radiation-tainted forests as the weather warms, could mean a ‘significant deterioration’ in the ability to control the spread of radiation in Ukraine and beyond.