Kryvyi Rih shopping centre hit by double drone strike, killing 14
President Zelensky accuses Moscow of a deliberate "double-tap" attack on emergency workers, as casualties mount in his hometown.
Two Russian drone strikes on a shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih have killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 120 others. The daytime attack occurred on Friday, striking a major commercial hub in the city, which is also the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Regional Governor Oleksandr Hanzha confirmed the toll via the Telegram messaging app, stating that 22 children were among the injured. He reported that 29 people were in serious condition, including five children, and shared images of black smoke billowing from the damaged structure.
President Zelensky described the sequence of events as "absolutely cynical and despicable," alleging that the second drone struck the shopping centre half an hour after the first. He characterised this as a "double-tap" strategy intended to target emergency workers responding to the initial impact, labelling the attacks "terrorist acts" and urging the international community to hold Russia to account.
The incident marks a further escalation in Russia’s air war as the conflict approaches its four-and-a-half-year mark. The strikes followed a Russian ballistic missile attack on the capital, Kyiv, on Thursday, which killed 17 people.
Ukraine has simultaneously intensified its own long-range drone campaigns against Russian infrastructure, targeting oil facilities, commercial warehouses, and logistics hubs. On Friday, a Ukrainian drone strike near the village of Razumnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region killed one person and wounded four others, two of whom were in serious condition.
Zelensky also claimed that Ukrainian drones struck the Marinovka military airfield in the Volgograd region and an oil refinery in Perm, located more than 1,600 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. While the Russian online news outlet Astra reported that a Lukoil-operated refinery in Perm was set ablaze, local officials confirmed damage only to an "unidentified industrial facility."
