Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended the rocket attack on a shopping mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Monday afternoon that killed at least 20 people and wounded 60 others.

Dozens of people are still missing.

"Nobody just shoots at the field here," Putin said on Wednesday evening during a visit to the Turkmen capital of Ashgarbad.

"As a rule, this happens as a result of enlightened targets." He, Putin, was certain that the shelling had taken place on such a basis in this case as well, and suggested that military equipment was "hidden in the shopping center, which the West in particular supplies “.

"The Russian army does not attack civilian targets - there is no need to do so."

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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A version of events corresponding to this description was launched by the “People's Republic” of Luhansk, a pro-Russian entity recognized by Putin as a “state” shortly before the attack on Ukraine in February.

On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense had spread a different version: according to this, warehouses in Kremenchuk were attacked with American weapons, and the fire in the shopping center, which was said to have been "out of order", was caused by the detonation of ammunition.

Another conflicting version was put forward by Russia's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, who said it was a "provocation" by Ukrainian forces ahead of the NATO summit in Madrid.

In the case of particularly sensational incidents with numerous deaths, the Russian power apparatus regularly spread contradictory versions;

They mostly agree that Russian responsibility is flatly denied and all blame is attributed to the other side, as in the case of the downing of flight MH17 almost eight years ago in the Donbass or in the case of the Bucha massacre near Kyiv last spring.

Now the Russian spectrum of rhetoric has been expanded to include the option of admitting an attack, but at the same time claiming that it was aimed at a goal important to the war effort.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 1,000 people were in the Amstor shopping center during the attack.

An adviser to Zelenskyj published footage from a surveillance camera showing a rocket hit;

The researchers of the "Bellingcat" project located the camera in the immediate vicinity of the shopping center using the metadata.

They pointed out that the images show a direct hit, but no spread fire from elsewhere and no further ammunition explosions, which speaks against the versions disseminated by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Luhansk “People's Republic” and now Putin himself.

In addition, it is widely documented that the shopping center was actually in operation and not closed.

According to Ukrainian sources, two X-22 rockets hit the mall.

They were fired from Tu-22 fighter jets that took off from the western Russian region of Kaluga.