Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for the United Nations to send a special representative or the secretary-general to the site of a missile strike on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk.
Zelenskiy said this would allow the UN to independently gather information and “see that this indeed was a Russian missile strike."
Zelenskiy made the comment on June 28 in a virtual address to an emergency session of the UN Security Council that Kyiv requested after the missile strike on June 27 in which at least 18 people died.
Russia's Defense Ministry denied it targeted the shopping mall, saying its missiles were fired at a weapons depot and that exploding ammunition stocks sparked the deadly fire.
"As a result of a high-precision strike, Western-made weapons and ammunition concentrated in the storage area for further shipment to the Ukrainian grouping of troops in the Donbas were hit," the ministry said in a statement.
Moscow also falsely claimed that the mall was "not operational" at the time of the strike.
Speaking from Kyiv, Zelenskiy, who after the strike said Russia should be labeled a "state sponsor of terrorism," also asked the UN to legally define the term "terrorist state." He argued that Moscow's invasion of his country demonstrates "the urgent necessity to enshrine it" at the level of the United Nations and punish any terrorist state.
He also said Russia should be excluded from the Security Council and should be deprived of its powers in the General Assembly.
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Stories Of Heroism At Ukrainian Shopping Center Hit By Russian Missile
Before Zelenskiy spoke, a UN official told the Security Council that the UN has recorded more than 10,600 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 4,731 deaths. Rosemary DiCarlo, undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, said the true toll was "considerably higher."
In addition to the 18 confirmed dead in the missile strike on the shopping center, dozens were injured and many are still missing, authorities said on June 28.
Regional Governor Dmytro Lunyn said the mall was "completely destroyed" by the missile strike, which Ukraine said was fired from Tu-22 long-range bombers.
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations pledged on the last day of a summit in Germany to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes" as the war grinds on.
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The G7 leaders agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin "must not win this war, and we will continue to keep up and drive higher the economic and political costs for President Putin and his regime,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a closing news conference.
“For that, it is important to stand together -- including in the long haul that we certainly still face.”
Speaking at the end of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed that the seven leading industrialized democracies would support Ukraine and maintain sanctions against Russia “as long as necessary, and with the necessary intensity.”
He called the attack on the shopping center "a new war crime" and said “Russia cannot and should not win” the war.
In another strike reported on June 28, Russian missiles hit in the city of Dnipro, the regional governor said. Fire broke out as a result of the strike, and rescuers were searching for people under the rubble, said a spokeswoman for emergency services in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The missile hit a transport company, destroying 21 cars and 13 trucks, the spokeswoman said. A second missile hit an industrial enterprise, damaging several buildings.
The head of the Luhansk regional military administration, Serhiy Hayday said that Ukrainian defenders will try to hold the line against Russian forces in the east as they look to buy time until the arrival of Western weapons.
Russian forces were trying to storm Lysychansk, which lies across the Siverskiy Donets River from Syevyerodonetsk, to complete their capture of Luhansk in the Donbas region.
To the west of Lysychansk, the mayor of Slovyansk said Russian forces fired cluster munitions, including one that hit a residential neighborhood. Authorities said the number of victims had yet to be confirmed.
Separately, Zelenskiy said he had told NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg that his country needs missile defense systems to prevent Russian attacks.
Britain's Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence bulletin on June 28 that Ukrainian forces continued to consolidate their positions on higher ground in Lysychansk, after abandoning its twin city, Syevyerodonetsk, to the Russians.
The bulletin said Ukrainian forces continued to disrupt the Russians' command and control with successful strikes deep behind Russian lines.
British intelligence assessed that Russian forces in the Donbas are increasingly "hollowed out" and their combat effectiveness has been degraded -- a situation that is "probably unsustainable" in the long term.