What’s changing in this war is altitude and timing. On Friday two Russian drones struck the largest shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih, and the second of them arrived roughly 30 minutes after the first, aimed, by Kyiv’s account, at the emergency crews. By Saturday the death toll from the double-tap strike stood at 16, after another body was brought out of the rubble overnight, with about 130 people injured and four still missing.
The city, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, observed a day of mourning. Rescue crews from seven other Ukrainian regions were sent in on Friday evening; the fire, which covered an area of about 9,000 sq m, was put out. Footage verified by the BBC captured the second drone hitting the mall as it burned. Russia’s military has said nothing.
Rescuers Race the Rubble
“We’re doing everything possible to speed up… the search and rescue operation,” Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, told Ukrainian television on Saturday, warning that the dig could last two more days given the scale of destruction and the threat of further strikes. In a later update he said 52 wounded people, among them 14 children, were still being treated in city hospitals. City military chief Oleksandr Vilkul said dozens had already undergone surgery.
Zelensky condemned the “cynical and despicable” attack and said the second drone had deliberately gone after emergency workers. On Telegram he went further: “Attacks like these are nothing less than terrorist acts,” he wrote, and pressed the world to answer with pressure on Moscow and accountability for the war. In Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Audrey Macalpine read the public mood: “Some are calling it a blatant act of terror, saying Ukraine must respond to it accordingly.”
Why Nothing Stopped Them
The trend underneath is technological. Vilkul said the drones flew at “extremely low altitudes” and called the attackers “animals”. Ukraine’s military says its air defence units stop about 90% of incoming drones; officials have not explained why these two got through. Ballistic missiles are the harder problem, with the defence ministry reporting an interception rate of about 40% in June, and Kyiv has said repeatedly that its stock of US-made Patriot missiles, the most effective counter, is running low.
A Wider Night of Fire
The mall was not the only target. Zelensky reported “missile and drone strikes throughout the evening and night” across Ukraine: a “brutal” drone strike injured three people on a minibus in Zaporizhzhia, strikes on railway infrastructure in the capital killed one person, and the state emergencies service said two more died in the Kyiv region. A day earlier, a major Russian attack on Kyiv had killed 17 people and wounded more than 40.
Russia’s defence ministry said it downed 457 Ukrainian drones overnight. Its own regions took hits as well: a drone hit a port town in the Krasnodar region, killing two children, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said, and acting Governor Alkesandr Shuvaev reported two people killed and 13 injured in Belgorod. Ukraine, for its part, set a refinery in Russia’s Samara region ablaze overnight, and Ozon, the country’s second largest online retailer, lost a warehouse in the region to a strike for the first time.
The United Nations human rights mission counted 437 civilians killed and 2,610 injured in Russian attacks during July, the highest monthly toll since May 2022. The next signal comes Monday, Ukraine’s independence day, when the 34-member coalition of the willing meets to reaffirm support for Kyiv. Until then, the rescuers in Kryvyi Rih keep digging, and the four still missing set the deadline that matters.
Sources
- Rescuers dig through Ukraine mall wreckage as Zelensky condemns 'despicable' Russian strike
- Russian drone attack on busy shopping centre kills 15 in Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera
