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Kremenchuk and the G7: 27 June 2022
Summary
A look back at a day of missile strikes on civilian sites in Ukraine and a Western pledge of more support.
What did the events of 27 June 2022 show about the shape of the war and the support behind Ukraine? The day combined a deadly missile strike in central Ukraine, a reported attack on civilians in the east, and a pledge of fresh backing from leaders gathered in Germany.
Kremenchuk
Two missiles struck a crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk on 27 June 2022. Initial reports put the toll at no fewer than 13 dead and 50 injured. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said more than a thousand people were inside at the time.
Later accounts raised the figures. The attack killed at least 20 people and injured at least 59. The missiles were Kh-22 cruise missiles, and they hit the Kredmash road machinery plant and the Amstor shopping mall next to it. A fire broke out. Russian media and officials carried conflicting stories about the attack.
The east
The same day, the Governor of Luhansk Oblast said a Russian strike in Lysychansk had killed eight civilians who were collecting water and injured 21 others. Lysychansk mattered because pro-Russian forces had said on 25 June that they had entered the city, described as the last major city in Luhansk Oblast still held by Ukrainian forces, and that street fighting was under way. The mayor of Sieverodonetsk had announced that day that Russian forces had fully occupied that city. The battle for Sieverodonetsk is dated from 28 February to 24 June 2022.
A wider pattern of strikes
The Kremenchuk attack followed several days of long-range fire. On 25 June, Russia launched dozens of cruise missiles at targets in multiple Ukrainian cities, including Yavoriv, Zhytomyr and Desna. At least 20 were fired from Belarusian airspace. On 26 June, a missile strike killed a civilian and destroyed a strategic bridge in Cherkasy Oblast that connected western Ukraine with the eastern battlefields. That same day, several cruise missiles hit Kyiv, killing one civilian and injuring four, according to Ukraine's Prosecutor General. Some were launched from Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea.
Taken together, the strikes reached from the capital to central and western Ukraine while ground fighting continued in Luhansk Oblast. The 26 June bridge strike also hit a link between western Ukraine and the eastern front.
The G7 response
On 27 June 2022, leaders at the G7 summit in Germany issued a statement pledging more financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine. It came after Zelenskyy issued a video calling for more heavy weapons from allies.
The sequence is plain from the reports of the day. Ukraine pressed for heavy weapons, the G7 promised wider support, and missiles struck a crowded civilian site in Kremenchuk on the same day. The reports do not tie the strike to the summit, and this analysis does not either. What they record is the setting in which the pledge was made: a war in which civilians were being killed in the east and in cities far from the front.
