Russia bombed a hardware store in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding 40, Ukrainian authorities said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack as “despicable.”
Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleg Sinegbov said in a Telegram message that two Russian guided bombs had hit the store, killing six people “on the spot,” wounding 40 and leaving 16 missing.
Two of the dead were “men who worked in a hypermarket,” Sinegbov said in a Telegram video.
An AFP journalist saw firefighters spraying water on blazes sparked by the air raids as thick black smoke rose from the burnt-out Epitsentr DIY supermarket on the city's northeastern outskirts.
The Epitsentr chain sells household goods and DIY supplies.
Lyubov, who works as a cleaner at a hypermarket, described how he managed to escape the building still wearing his uniform.
“It happened all of a sudden. I didn't understand it at first. Everything went dark and everything was falling on our heads,” she said.
“Thank goodness my phone lit up, the flashlight helped me know where to go, but everything in sight was already on fire.”
– “Everything went dark” –
“At the moment we know that there may have been more than 200 people inside the hypermarket,” Zelenskiy said in a Telegram message, condemning the daytime attack as targeting “clearly civilians.”
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that the Russian attack on the store was “unacceptable.”
“France shares the pain of the Ukrainian people and will continue to work fully alongside them,” he said.
Russia's state news agency TASS cited security sources as saying the missile attack destroyed a “military warehouse and command center” inside the shopping center.
The regional governor said he had “not had any contact with any of the staff” and that “according to our information, visitors may still be in the building.”
Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, lies just a few dozen kilometers from the border and is regularly hit by Russian missile attacks.
Sinegbov said the city was “under heavy rocket attack throughout the day” on Saturday.
– “A brutal blow” –
Another attack late on Saturday in central Kharkiv wounded 14 people in an area including a post office, a beauty salon and a cafe, the city's mayor, Igor Terekhov, said.
President Zelensky visited Kharkiv on Friday and met with officials to discuss the defense of the surrounding region.
He called on world leaders on Saturday to provide Ukraine with “adequate air defense” to “prevent such terrorist attacks.”
“Russia dealt our Kharkiv construction hypermarket another brutal blow in broad daylight on Saturday,” Zelenskyy said.
“Only a madman like Putin could murder and terrorize people in such a despicable way,” he said, referring to the Russian president, who ordered the deployment of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The latest attack came after Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region on May 10. Ukraine said on Friday it had successfully thwarted Moscow's advance and was counterattacking.
Ukrainian rescue services posted pictures of firefighters spraying water inside the burning Epitaph Center store, whose roof was torn off and rubble was scattered everywhere.
The blaze spread to an area of ​​10,000 square metres (108,000 square feet) but firefighters managed to bring it under control.
“There were many workers and shoppers inside,” Zelensky said.
He later said a hypermarket had been “burnt down” and around 60 people had been injured in Kharkiv in one day.
– Border Attack –
Russia and Ukraine on Saturday blamed each other's militaries for attacks in their border areas.
Russia said Ukrainian artillery fire on a small town in the Belgorod border region killed two people and wounded 10.
Ukrainian prosecutors said Russia shelled the village of Kupyansk-Buzlovy, a railway hub in the Kharkiv region near the border, wounding five people.
Police said two vehicles were struck by gunfire: a car with two passengers and an ambulance with a driver, a paramedic and a 64-year-old patient inside.
According to prosecutors, Russia also carried out airstrikes in the Kupyansk region, damaging factories and homes.
In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling on Saturday killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded four others, said Vadim Filashkin, head of the region's administration.
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