Deadly attack on supermarket in Kharkiv by Russia

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When an aerial bomb hit a large department store in the city of Kharkiv on Saturday afternoon, numerous people were killed or injured, according to local authorities.

The airstrike caused a massive fire to break out, with social media videos showing huge clouds of smoke filling the sky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 200 people may have been in the store.

A second bomb hit the city’s central park, said Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

Zelensky described the air strike as an “expression of Russian madness” and appealed to Western countries to equip Ukraine with air defense systems.

“When we tell world leaders that Ukraine needs adequate air defense protection, we are literally talking about how to prevent such terrorist attacks,” he said in a post on X.

“Only madmen like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin are capable of killing and terrorizing people like this,” Zelensky added.

The Kharkiv region is located about 20 kilometers from the Russian border.

In recent weeks, Moscow’s troops have captured villages in the area as part of a large-scale offensive, and analysts believe they may be trying to get within artillery range of the city of Kharkiv.

Ukrainian authorities have evacuated more than 11,000 people from the region since the offensive began on May 10.

The Russian advance in Kharkiv appears to be part of a coordinated new offensive that is also testing Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region further south, where the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had captured the village of Archanhelske.

They have also launched incursions into the northern regions of Sumy and Chernihiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin’s army was trying to create a “buffer zone” in the Kharkiv region to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.