On Monday, June 27, the Russians launched a missile attack on a shopping center in downtown Kremenchuk. There were over a thousand people inside the mall when the rocket hit. The rescuers extinguished the fire only by the next morning. It took another 2 days to clear the rubble. By the morning, the death toll rose to 20, but this figure will be increasing as the searching parties continue their work.
What happened at the scene soon after the airstrike? Was it possible to avoid this many casualties? Where did the second missile fired by the Russians hit - Oleg POPENKO, co-chairman of the volunteer fund Trust of the People, a resident of Kremenchuk who witnessed the missile strike on the shopping center shared in his comment to Apostrophe TV.
- You witnessed a missile strike on the mall. Please tell us what happened.
- My house is located 700 meters away from the mall. I felt the first explosion - the house shook, the windows in the common corridor were torn out, and a pot of flowers fell to the ground. I heard this sound, jumped out onto the balcony, and at that time saw the second missile directly hitting the mall. Just a moment later, glass fell on the street in neighboring houses where the windows were not replaced. Another 10-20 seconds later, I heard terrible cries: female, children. It came from the mall.
- Did people just have no opportunity and the time to escape?
- The people who were near the exit managed to run out and escape. And those who were inside, just where the missile hit... Of course, there is very little left of them. Yesterday, when I went to the mall, I saw dozens of ambulances that took out people with torn limbs. Adults, teenagers, children.
In addition, there was a playground on the left side of the shopping center. Parents were often playing there with their kids, while the rest of the family went shopping. Hence, many children were injured.
- What kind of a shopping center was it? There was not only a supermarket there, but also other stores, and many visited it, didn't they?
- Yes, there were many shops. There was a supermarket and a large home appliance store. At that time, there could be around 1500 people there. For example, the employees of Amstor and other retail institutions counted together would make up to 400 people. And there were also a considerable number of visitors.
By the way, it's not just a shopping mall. On the site in front of the mall, there was a mini-bus station where minibusses dropped people off. There were several minibusses when a missile hit.
- Were the people on the street hurt too?
- It's not yet clear if there were any casualties there because it was hard to understand who those people were. Perhaps, they were those who managed to run out of the mall, or maybe they already were on the street. All the area immediately turned into a huge fire. For understanding, to extinguish the fire, a special fire train of Ukrzaliznytsia was needed, 20 fire trucks, and a thousand rescuers who are still working at the scene, dismantling the rubble and looking for the corpses.
- I saw the terrifying footage. They say there was also a toy store, so there were so many children there.
- Yes, there was a toy store inside. There are always a lot of children there. And as I said, there was also a playground there.
- It was like a ‘family’ shopping mall?
- Absolutely, it was a huge store with everything you needed. There was even a pet store with dogs, they didn't have time to get them out. The dogs burned alive. It was a huge store - more than 10 thousand square meters.
By the way, on June 23, the management ordered the employees not to respond to air raid alarms and not to do anything to make people leave the space during air raid alerts. In fact, all of them ignored the air alarm.
During the first days of the war, local supermarkets held a training- not this supermarket in particular, but all others. They set a timer for 10 minutes to leave the supermarket and get all the people outside. If the management of this particular supermarket also reacted to the air raid alert on time, if they did force everyone to leave the room, there would not have been so many casualties.
- Was this shopping center somehow different from the others: was it the largest or the most popular? Could it have become a specific cynical target for Russians?
- This is the only shopping center located in the city center, so there have always been a lot of people there. I am sure that Russian troops aimed their missiles directly at the mall on purpose. They are now writing that they targeted an oil depot near the mall. This is a complete lie because the refinery is located 14 kilometers away from the shopping mall, and there was no tank farm nearby.
The second rocket they fired hit the local stadium in Kremenchuk. There is no tank farm. By the way, why did they hit a local stadium? I will say my personal opinion, I think it's because it is located on the territory of the local park, and there are always a huge number of people during the summer. And they didn't want to hit the stadium but targeted the park. This is a huge place to relax, there are several big children's playgrounds, and there are a lot of children. They didn't aim to hit the stadium but to kill people on purpose.
- They switched to an open terror.
- Yes. This is intimidation of the civilian population. This is the coercion to cooperate with the Russian aggressor.
- They can't find an excuse for it. Their lies are not only about the ‘strategic facilities nearby’. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation said that "the fire in a non-functioning shopping center arose due to the detonation of ammunition for Western weapons, which were stored at the plant nearby."
- The fact is that the missile directly hit a working shopping mall. Everyone who tried to cover such actions with lies had the opportunity to come there yesterday and see dozens of people taken out by cars - the people who were carried out on stretchers without their limbs. It was terrible. What I saw was terrible.