The CCTV footage that debunks Russia’s lies about Kremenchuk shopping centre attack

It began as a scene far removed from the images of war that have poured out of Ukraine since the invasion began in February.

CCTV footage from Kremenchuk, an industrial city in central Ukraine well behind the front line, showed families walking in a public park enjoying the summer sun.

However, their peace quickly turned to panic when a Russian missile struck a shopping centre half a mile away. Parents scrambled to grab their children and take cover. Another missile would soon land nearby.

Some 20 people were killed in the shopping centre on Monday, in what Kyiv has described as a targeted attack on a shopping mall with 1,000 civilians inside.

Moscow claimed that no missiles hit the mall. However, newly released footage has shown a long-range anti-ship missile landing on the Amstor shopping mall before another missile struck an industrial site just a kilometre away.

The latest CCTV video, released by Volodymyr Zelensky late on Tuesday, gave the clearest evidence yet of a direct hit on the mall.

In a short clip time-coded at 3.51pm, a missile can be seen soaring through the air over what appears to be the mall for a split second before a fiery explosion lights up the landscape and throws debris into the air.

The Ukrainian president said the video proved that Russia knew what it was targeting and accused the Kremlin of trying to “kill as many people as possible”.

Earlier that day, he addressed the UN Security Council, calling on world leaders to punish Russia.

“The person who carried out this strike knew for sure that he was aiming a missile at an ordinary shopping centre,” Mr Zelensky said, denying Russia’s claim that the mall, in the city of Kremenchuk, was not in use.

Ukraine’s air force command said that the shopping mall was hit by Russian Kh-22 missiles fired from Tu-22M3 bombers that flew from Shaykovka airfield in Russia’s Kaluga region, 190 miles southwest of Moscow.

Pavel Luzin, an independent Russian defence expert, told The Telegraph that both the blast impact he saw in photos and videos from the scene, and a screengrab of the missile in the air from CCTV video, appeared to show that the mall was struck by the Kh-22, a long-range anti-ship missile designed in the Soviet Union.

Russian state media on Monday spent hours spinning theories about the mall bombing, accusing Ukrainians of faking the attack.

Russia’s defence ministry, however, soon claimed responsibility for striking Kremenchuk but insisted that the mall caught fire after a missile hit a warehouse with Western-donated weapons.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian military, said on Tuesday that Russia used “high-precision weapons” to target hangars at a local factory storing fresh ammunition and weapons that were bound to be sent to eastern Ukraine, the epicentre of the war’s heaviest fighting.

“Ammunition for Western weaponry stored at the warehouse denoted, causing a fire at a shopping centre nearby that has not been operational,” he said.

Bellingcat, a forensic investigation group, debunked Moscow’s claim that the mall went ablaze after the ammunition stored nearby at the Kremenchuk road machinery plant blew up.

Drone footage of the destroyed mall clearly showed its central section completely destroyed with the roof of the mall flattened – damage consistent with a missile strike.

Satellite images from the area published by Bellingcat appeared to show little noticeable damage in the area between the mall and the industrial site about a kilometre away that was hit by a second attack.

Several CCTV clips from the area published by local media back the suggestion that the mall was hit first before a second missile hit the Kremenchuk road machinery plant.

In one of the most stunning videos from Kremenchuk, residents were seen in what appeared to be a few minutes between the first and the second explosion.

A CCTV video from the Misky park close to the factory showed a parent hurrying to hide behind the tree as clouds of grey smoke are rising from the direction of the Amstor mall.

A second later, a powerful blast close to the camera shook the park, sending debris raining into the pond and on the ground.

Another video showed a couple running across the lawn from what would soon be the epicentre of the explosion before the man rolled on the ground and leapt into the water.

The footage appeared to show the hit on the factory time-coded at 3.59pm, or eight minutes after the CCTV video showing a missile striking the shopping mall.

In the past four months of the war, Russian forces have destroyed a great number of civilian infrastructure often situated near industrial sites, leading military experts to believe that Russia may be running low on high-precision weapons.

In a daily briefing on Wednesday, the UK’s Ministry of Defence suggested that the Russian forces in Kremenchuk were possibly aiming for the plant nearby.

“Russia’s inaccuracy in conducting long-range strikes has previously resulted in mass civilian casualty incidents, including at Kramatorsk railway station on 9 April 2022,” the briefing said.

“Russia’s shortage of more modern precision-strike weapons and the professional shortcomings of their targeting planners will highly likely result in further civilian casualties.”