Rescuers were still clearing the rubble under the eyes of Dasha, a young saleswoman from a shop in the Kremenchuk shopping center, which had gone up in smoke. “It was around 4 p.m.says the young woman. The alarm sounded, we immediately went out the back door. And then there was a deafening noise. The explosion was so strong that I was thrown to the ground. It was total panic. It’s a miracle. If I had stayed five more minutes inside, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”
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Some were much less fortunate. Mykola was wandering the aisles of “Amstor”, the name of the mall, before the strike. “I had taken my day, I was with my wifehe recalls. She said to me ‘Come on, let’s take a walk inside the mall’. Suddenly, I received a huge blow on the head, I lost consciousness. Then I got up. My wife was screaming in pain.”
“There were flames around us, smoke. People were screaming. There were bodies on the ground, no roof, no walls.”
Mykola, survivor of the bombardmentat franceinfo
Seriously injured and hospitalized, Mykola is one of the witnesses that the investigators will question.
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A thousand people were in this building in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine usually spared from the bombardments, according to local authorities. A recent toll reports at least 18 dead. The Ukrainian authorities continued Tuesday to search for forty missing in the rubble of the building. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced “one of the most shameless acts of terrorism in European history” and mentioned a “calculated strike.”
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“There’s no doubt about it, it’s a war crimesays Iryna Venediktova, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. This is once again to terrorize the population.” Inside, there was no military installation, she says. Like them, the neighbors of the building reject the version of the Russian army which claims to have struck a nearby military warehouse.
The missile strike ignited and destroyed the mall at a time when it was “busy”, according to Ukrainian authorities. “All the people who died were civilians”adds the Attorney General.
“It is very important to gather all the evidence to build a solid case for a trial, whether it is here in Ukraine or in The Hague, the goal of course is to find those responsible and bring justice.”
Iryna Venediktova, Prosecutor General of Ukraineat franceinfo
To judge the perpetrators of these massacres of civilians, Ukraine is calling for the creation of a special tribunal.
Testimonies of survivors of the bombing of the Kremenchouk shopping center, at the microphone of Omar Ouahmane and Gilles Gallinaroe
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