Defying the evidence, Putin and his officials deny that Russia hit residential areas. Putin has denied that Russian forces targeted the Kremenchuk mall, saying it was directed at a nearby weapons depot. But Ukrainian officials and witnesses said a missile directly hit the mall.
It was hardly the first time that bursts of violence were widely seen as signals of Moscow's displeasure. In late April, Russian missiles struck Kyiv barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a news conference with visiting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
"This says a lot about Russia's true attitude toward global institutions," Zelenskyy said at the time. Kyiv's mayor called the attack Putin's way of giving the "middle finger."
The Russian president recently warned that Moscow would strike targets it had so far spared if the West supplied Ukraine with weapons that could reach Russia. If Kyiv gets long-range rockets, Russia will "draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of," Putin said.
On Friday, a day after Russian forces made a high-profile retreat from Snake Island near the Black Sea port city of Odesa following what Ukraine called a barrage of artillery and missile strikes, Russia bombarded residential areas in a coastal town near Odesa and killed at least 21 people, including two children.
While Russia's messaging can be blunt and devastating, Ukraine's signals under Zelenskyy have focused daily on seeking to amplify Moscow's cruelty to a world that day by day risks becoming weary of the war.
If interest fades, the concerted support seen at global summits could fade, too. and with it the urgency to deliver the heavier weapons that Ukraine craves.
Zelenskyy tends to pair pleas for more help with reminders that all of Europe ultimately is at stake.
He described the mall attack as "one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history."
For all of Ukraine's indisputable suffering, it was a bold statement of some hyperbole in the context of extremist attacks with mass deaths in Paris, Nice, Brussels, Madrid and London in this century alone.
For Zelenskyy and Ukraine, the underlying demand cannot be reiterated enough: provide more heavy weapons, and faster, before Russia perhaps makes irreversible gains in the eastern industrial region of the Donbas, where street-by-street fighting grinds on.
In his nightly public addresses, Zelenskyy also makes sure to capture the traumatic toll on everyday life in Ukraine, appealing well beyond global leaders to the wider world.
This week, he accused Russia of sabotaging "people's attempts to live a normal life."
Images of the shopping mall's smoking debris said the rest.
