LAST UPDATE | 21 Mar 2022

AT LEAST SIX people were killed in the overnight bombing of a shopping centre in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, an AFP journalist said today as the EU condemned ‘war crimes’ carried out on civilians in Ukraine.

Six bodies were laid out in front of the Retroville shopping mall in the northwest of Kyiv, according to the journalist.

The 10-storey building was hit by a powerful blast that pulverised vehicles in its car park and left a crater several metres wide.

The burnt-out mall was still smoking this morning. All of its south side had been destroyed, as well as a fitness centre in its car park.

Twisted bits of metal and other debris were strewn across the area for hundreds of metres, as firefighters and soldiers searched the devastation for victims.

In the night, AFP journalists said a huge blast shook the city and fires could be seen blazing in the mall.

“Enemy shelling” had caused fires on several floors and set several cars ablaze, emergency services said on Facebook.

They released security camera footage showing a massive explosion and a mushroom cloud, followed by a series of smaller blasts.

Firefighters pulled at least one man covered in dust from the twisted debris, according to more video released by the emergency services.

Soldiers cordoned off the site and told journalists to move back, warning of danger from unexploded munitions without elaborating further.

Neighbours in a housing block whose windows were shattered by the blast said they had seen a mobile rocket launcher near the mall for several days previously.

Kyiv has been hit by a series of strikes over the past week, with one on an apartment block earlier Sunday wounding five people.

Russia’s advance on Kyiv has however largely stalled. Moscow’s forces engage in sporadic fighting to the northwest and east but have barely moved for two weeks.

Mariupol

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have rejected a Russian demand that their forces in the besieged strategic port city of Mariupol lay down arms and raise white flags in exchange for safe passage out.

Russia has been barraging the encircled southern city on the Sea of Azov, hitting an art school sheltering some 400 people only hours before offering to open two corridors out of the city in return for the capitulation of its defenders, according to Ukrainian officials.

Fighting for Mariupol has continued to be intense, even as the Russian offensive in other areas has floundered to the point where Western governments and analysts see the broader conflict grinding into a war of attrition.

Ukrainian officials rejected the Russian proposal for safe passage out of Mariupol even before Moscow’s 5am (3am Irish time) deadline for a response came and went.

“There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda. “We have already informed the Russian side about this.”

Multiple diplomats and politicians across the EU have labelled Russian actions as war crimes, however, further sanctions against Russia seem unlikely for now.

With civilian deaths mounting in the besieged port city of Mariupol, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the increase in Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and theatres.

The “courts will have to decide, but for me these are clearly war crimes”, Ms Baerbock said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said before he chaired a meeting of the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels that “what’s happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime. Destroying everything, bombarding and killing everybody in an indiscriminate manner. This is something awful”.

Multiple attempts to evacuate residents from Mariupol have failed or only partly succeeded.

City officials said at least 2,300 people have died in the siege, with some buried in mass graves.

Mr Borrell underlined that “war also has law”.

The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands is gathering evidence about any possible war crimes in Ukraine, but Russia, like the United States, does not recognise the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said his country is “certainly open to other mechanisms for accountability in terms of the atrocities that are taking place in Ukraine right now”.

Mr Coveney said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is probably the first “war being played out on social media, where people see images happening live, and they’re outraged by it”.

“This is driving a fury across the European Union within the public as to why can’t we stop this,” he told reporters.

“They want people held to account for the decisions taken and the brutality that we have seen.”

New sanctions

The imposition of a new round of sanctions – asset freezes and travel bans – appears unlikely for now.

 the issue of imposing restrictive measures on energy remains extremely sensitive, given the dependence of many EU countries on supplies of Russian natural gas.

A group of countries led by Germany wants a pause on new measures for now, amid concern about high energy prices and fears that Russia might halt gas exports to Europe.

Some also want to save sanction ammunition for any new and major war atrocity, such as the use of chemical weapons.

“We are doing everything to close loopholes in the sanctions” that have already been agreed, Ms Baerbock said.

With reporting by Press Association