Does Putin’s shopping centre strike signal a new strategy?

A crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk has become the latest target for Russia’s missile attack. There were more than a thousand civilians’ in the mall, Volodymyr Zelensky said, ‘The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire. The number of victims is impossible to imagine’. X-22 missiles were fired from Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers, with launches made from the Kursk region, according to Ukrainian Air Force Command. The death toll so far is 13 with about 40 injured. An air raid siren sounding shortly before the blast may have allowed some to escape to safety, but rescuers are seeking to salvage bodies now.

There have long been fears that Russia would move on from its reliance on tanks and switch to missiles – flattening the parts of Ukraine that it could not invade. It would be fairly easily done, but Putin at first held back – perhaps mindful of how hard civilian casualties would be to explain in Russia. There was always the risk that the war would escalate in such a way. Some 65 missiles were fired over the weekend, 14 of them hitting Kyiv.

⚡️ Zelensky: 'Russia strikes shopping center in Kremenchuk, while over thousand people inside.'

“The mall is on fire, firefighters are trying to extinguish the fire, the number of victims is impossible to imagine," said President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Volodymyr Zelensky/Telegram pic.twitter.com/Pb8IGeAevD

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 27, 2022

The recent increase in missile attacks is seen by many in Ukraine and Europe as timed to coincide with the G7 summit – a signal that far worse could be to come, that Russia could yet do to Ukrainian cities what it did to Grozny. Carl Bildt, co-chair European Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s difficult to see recent attacks ‘as anything but a deliberate Russian escalation and a signal to the G7 meeting in Elmau’. There's some speculation that Putin's atrocity is intended to harden appetite for a ceasefire on Moscow's terms - something which may well split the G7.

Whether deliberate or accidental, a shopping mall strike will be difficult for Moscow to present as a military target. The 22 March attack on the Retroville shopping centre was justified on the grounds that it was being used for military purposes. But today? Russia’s self-appointed ‘war correspondents’ are already out on social media saying that the Kremenchuk attack was carried out by the Ukrainian military. ‘Ukraine paid actors who are in mall running,’ says Voenkor, a Russian telegram channel. ‘They will put corpses in the mall and claim they are citizens’.

The biggest missile strike so far was that directed at the theatre in Mariupol which was being used as a shelter: with up to 600 feared dead. The 8 April strike on the Kramatorsk railway station killed an estimated 61 people and wounded 121. Russia has a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles with almost all of Luhansk under Russian control. It could well be that we have entered a new phase of the war.