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Early Monday, photographers documented several bodies laid outside an entrance to the mall. A Washington Post reporter who visited the site after the bodies were removed saw puddles of blood and olive green blood-soaked jackets on the ground. Abandoned surgical gloves were scattered about — apparently left over from medics who tried to save the victims.
“This attack on a shopping center is not a coincidence. Putin wants to starve the civilians to make them pressurize their leaders,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko posted on Twitter on Monday. “Let’s pressurize Putin‘s Russia instead. If you continue to do business with them, you have blood on your hands.”
Just inside the mall, next to a grocery store that one former employee said was now being used for storage, glass covered the floor and a large puddle of water sat in the hall. The ceiling was also damaged. Troops guarding the door initially allowed a group of journalists to enter but then forced the press to leave.
Crowds of civilians gathered around the site on Monday to try to take pictures and in some cases access apartments belonging to friends or family members that had been damaged. Some were prevented from doing so.
Witnesses said the strike occurred around 11 p.m. on Sunday. Journalists were unable to immediately reach the scene due to a citywide curfew that begins at 8 p.m. and is not lifted until morning.
Vladyslov Kosiak, 21, was sitting on his fourth-floor balcony nearby when he heard the strike.
“There was a very loud bang and the building started to shake like an earthquake,” he said.
Vitaliya Dubovetska, who lives on the 16th floor of a building nearby, stopped by the site of the attack on Monday after checking on her relatives’ building nearby, where windows had been destroyed.
“The whole city is dangerous,” she said. “Any place could be safe or unsafe, it’s like a lottery.”
Jennifer Hassan and Jonathan Edwards contributed to this report.
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