A brutal Russian double-tap drone assault on a crowded shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has left at least 15 people dead and more than 130 others injured, according to local Ukrainian officials. Multiple additional people remain trapped beneath the rubble of the city’s largest mall, raising fears that the final death toll will climb higher in the coming hours.
The attack, which unfolded in broad daylight on Friday, was carried out in two sequential waves, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed. The second drone strike was deliberately timed to hit the mall after first responders had already arrived on scene to rescue injured civilians, targeting emergency personnel who were working to pull survivors from the wreckage. Zelensky, who was born in Kryvyi Rih, condemned the assault as “absolutely cynical and despicable.”
Verified footage obtained and authenticated by the BBC captures the moment the second drone impacts the already burning multi-story shopping center, located in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. As of Friday evening, regional administration head Oleksandr Hanzha confirmed that 15 fatalities have been recorded, two of whom succumbed to their injuries after being transported to local hospitals. Of the 130 injured people, 23 are children, and 29 remain in critical, life-threatening condition.
Oleksandr Vilkul, mayor of Kryvyi Rih, reported that Russian attack drones flew at extremely low altitudes to evade air defense systems ahead of the strike. In a public statement, he called the attackers “animals” and confirmed that multiple unaccounted-for civilians are still missing, with no response to rescue team communications. Search and rescue teams from four other Ukrainian regions have been urgently dispatched to Kryvyi Rih to assist in the search for any remaining survivors trapped in the debris.
Friday’s attack comes just 24 hours after a large-scale Russian missile and drone barrage targeted Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, killing 17 people and injuring more than 40 others. Overnight strikes on Kyiv hit residential apartment blocks and commercial warehouses, and caused damage to a local children’s hospital and a nearby school.
The assault on Kryvyi Rih also follows a Friday morning announcement from Ukraine’s military that it had carried out its own strikes against an oil refinery and a military airfield located deep inside Russian territory. In recent months, Kyiv has stepped up long-range attacks against Russian energy infrastructure, as well as logistics and storage facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. Ukrainian officials maintain that all targeted sites are legitimate military-related assets that contribute directly to funding and supporting Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched by President Vladimir Putin in February 2022. As of the current date, Russian forces maintain control of roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, concentrated primarily in the country’s southeastern regions. The Kremlin has not yet issued any official comment on the Kryvyi Rih shopping center strike.