Kyiv, Ukraine –
The latest in a litany of horrors in Ukraine came this week when Russian firepower fell on civilians in a busy shopping mall far from the front lines of a war in its fifth month.
The timing was probably not a coincidence.
While much of the war of attrition in eastern Ukraine is hidden from view, the brutality of Russian missile attacks on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk and on residential buildings in the capital Kyiv unfolded. in view of the world and especially the West. leaders met for a trio of summits in Europe.
Were the attacks a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin as the West sought to arm Ukraine with more effective weapons to bolster its resistance and put Ukraine on the path to joining the European Union?
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko suggested as much when missiles hit the capital on June 26, three days after EU leaders unanimously agreed to make Ukraine a candidate member.
It was “perhaps a symbolic attack” as the Group of Seven major economic powers and then NATO leaders prepared to meet and put more pressure on Moscow, he said. At least six people were killed in the Kyiv attack, which destroyed an apartment building.
The former commanding general of US Army forces in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, went further in connecting the attack and the meetings. “The Russians are humiliating the leaders of the West,” he said.
A day after the Kyiv attack, as G7 leaders were meeting in Germany to discuss increased support for Ukraine during their annual summit, Russia fired missiles at a crowded shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk. , killing at least 19 people.
The timing of both attacks appeared to be juxtaposed with European meetings of US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, all supporters of Ukraine.
In defiance of the evidence, Putin and his officials deny that Russia struck residential areas. Putin has denied that Russian forces attacked the Kremenchuk shopping mall, saying it was aimed at a nearby weapons depot. But Ukrainian officials and witnesses said a missile directly hit the mall.
It was not the first time that outbursts of violence were widely seen as signs of Moscow’s discontent. In late April, Russian missiles hit Kyiv just an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a news conference with visiting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards global institutions,” Zelenskyy said at the time. Kyiv’s mayor called the attack Putin’s way of showing the “middle finger.”
The Russian president recently warned that Moscow would hit targets it had hitherto avoided if the West supplied Ukraine with weapons that could reach Russia. If Kyiv gets long-range rockets, Russia “will draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, of which we have plenty,” Putin said.
On Friday, a day after Russian forces made a high-profile withdrawal from Snake Island, near the Black Sea port city of Odessa, following what Ukraine called a barrage of artillery attacks. and missiles, Russia shelled residential areas in a coastal city near Odessa, killing at least 21 people, including two children.
While Russia’s messages can be blunt and devastating, Ukraine’s signals under Zelenskyy have focused daily on seeking to amplify Moscow’s cruelty to a world that risks becoming war-weary every day.
If interest fades, the concerted support seen at world summits could fade as well. and with it the urgency to hand over the heavier weapons that Ukraine longs for.
Zelenskyy tends to combine pleas for more help with reminders that ultimately all of Europe is at stake.
He described the attack on the mall as “one of the most audacious terrorist attacks in European history”.
For all of Ukraine’s undeniable suffering, it was a bold statement of a certain hyperbole in the context of extremist attacks with mass deaths in Paris, Nice, Brussels, Madrid and London in this century alone.
For Zelenskyy and Ukraine, the underlying demand cannot be reiterated enough: provide more heavy weapons, faster, before Russia may make irreversible gains in the eastern industrial region of Donbas, where street-by-street fighting continues.
In his late-night public addresses, Zelenskyy also makes sure to capture the traumatic toll of everyday life in Ukraine, appealing far beyond world leaders to the rest of the world.
This week, he accused Russia of sabotaging “people’s attempts to live a normal life.”
Images of the smoldering rubble of the mall said the rest.
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Fakahany reported from London.
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