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Military operation in Ukraine

‘Fake news’: Diplomat castigates claims about ‘Russian strike’ on Kremenchug mall

Maria Zakharova criticized the deliberate moves as hiding behind the backs of civilians, using them as human shields for the sake of the West’s geopolitical interests

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/ Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has slammed as fake news Kiev’s reports about a Russian air strike at a shopping mall in Kremenchug.

"An attempt to claim that Russian forces struck a shopping mall in Kremenchug on June 27 is the latest blatant provocation by the [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky regime. The Kiev regime has claimed there were some 1,000 civilians in the mall, etc. Unfortunately, all this fake news was disseminated," the Russian diplomat said at a news conference on Wednesday.

"The Western countries could as well ask their regimes what’s the use of delivering and storing weapons and ammunition near a shopping center? It never occurred to either Western reporters, or Western NGOs and the `humanitarian activists’ who are so much concerned over the situation around Ukraine to ask this question," Zakharova remarked.

She criticized the deliberate moves as hiding behind the backs of civilians, using them as human shields for the sake of the West’s geopolitical interests.

"It is the storage facilities that the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed with high-precision strikes," the spokeswoman emphasized.

On Tuesday, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported that the Russian Aerospace Forces delivered high-precision surgical strikes on hangars containing US-and EU-supplied weapons near a road machinery plant in Kremenchug. "The ensuing blast from the ammunition for the Western-supplied arms stored there sparked a fire at a defunct shopping mall located close to the plant," the general pointed out.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel that a shopping mall was ablaze in Kremenchug. He claimed that a rocket attack had caused the fire. Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said on Monday that this case resembled the false flag in Bucha, noting that the shopping mall incident had numerous glaring inconsistencies around it.

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Foreign policy Military operation in Ukraine

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