By FRANCESCA EBEL and YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press
KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) -- France's president denounced Russia's fiery airstrike on a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine as a "new war crime" Tuesday and vowed the West's support for Kyiv would not waver, saying Moscow "cannot and should not win" the war.
The strike, which killed at least 18 people in the central city of Kremenchuk, came as leaders from the Group of Seven nations met in Europe. It was part of unusually intense barrage of Russian fire across Ukraine, including in the capital of Kyiv, that renewed international attention as the war drags on.
Speaking at the end of the G-7 summit in Germany, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to address that concern, vowing that the seven leading industrialized democracies would support Ukraine and maintain sanctions against Russia "as long as necessary, and with the necessary intensity."
"Russia cannot and should not win," he said. He called Monday's attack on the mall "a new war crime."
How to counter Russia and back Ukraine will also be the focus of a summit this week of the western NATO alliance, whose support has been critical to Kyiv's ability to fend off Moscow's larger and better equipped forces.
As Macron spoke, rescuers combed through the charred rubble of the shopping mall that authorities said was struck when more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and workers were inside.
In addition to the 18 killed, authorities said 59 were wounded. Another 21 people are still missing, Monastyrsky said.
Rocket attacks continued elsewhere in Ukraine, with authorities in the city of Dnipro reporting that workers at a diesel car repair shop were trapped in rubble after a strike from a cruise missile fired from the Black Sea, Ukrainian news agencies reported. The Ukrainian military managed to intercept and destroy other missiles fired at the city, the agencies said.
As condemnation came in from many quarters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov struck a defiant note, saying Russia would press its offensive until it fulfills its goals. He said the hostilities could stop "before the end of the day" if Ukraine were to surrender and meet Russia's demands, including recognizing its control over territory it has taken by force.
Ukraine's prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said the missile attack was one of Russia's "crimes against humanity." She emphasized the need for all Ukrainians to remain alert and expect a similar strike "every minute."
On Tuesday, Russian forces struck the Black Sea city of Ochakiv, damaging apartment buildings and killing two, including a 6-year-old child. A further six people, four of them children, were wounded. One of them, a 3-month-old baby, is in a coma, according to officials.
Zelenskyy has called for more air defense systems from his Western allies to help his forces fight back. NATO's support for Ukraine will be a major focus of a summit starting this week in Madrid, and an early signal of unity came Tuesday when Turkey agreed to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted the Nordic pair to abandon their long-held nonaligned status and apply to join NATO.
In a sinister message to NATO leaders, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos published satellite images and the precise coordinates of the conference hall where their summit will be held.
It also posted images and the coordinates of the White House, the Pentagon and the government headquarters in London, Paris and Berlin -- referring to them as "decision-making centers supporting the Ukrainian nationalists" in a message on the Telegram app. That wording echoes Russian President Vladimir Putin's warnings that he could target such centers in response to what he has called Western aggression.
In other developments, the two fighting countries continued a sporadic series of prisoner exchanges. Ukraine exchanged 15 Russian prisoners-of-war for 16 Ukrainian soldiers and one civilian, the Ukrainian Pravda news outlet reported Tuesday.
Ukrainian Pravda also reported that in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the mayor was detained Tuesday and occupying authorities seized his computer hard drive and documents after he had refused to cooperate with Russian-appointed local officials. Russia's Tass news agency confirmed the detention.