Russian drone attacks kill 16 in Ukrainian shopping centre

**Alex Ritzen** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen, and in the early hours of Saturday 22 August, these are our main stories. A Russian drone attack on a shopping centre in central Ukraine has killed at least 16 people and injured 130 Donald Trump wins the latest round of a legal battle over his plans to build a huge White House ballroom. The Netherlands has fined the US tech company Uber hundreds of millions of dollars, one of the largest ever penalties issued under Europe's technology privacy rules.
Also in this podcast, the United Nations says the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the deadliest in the country's history and it is growing exponentially.

**Julian Harnies** (0:50)
The epidemic is spreading to an area that is bigger than France, and the outbreak is growing faster and wider than the Ebola response.

**Alex Ritzen** (1:01)
And a collection of handwritten notes by the Indian Independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has been sold at auction.
It's not known what the strategic value of a Ukrainian shopping centre was to the Russian military which used drones to attack the building, killing at least 16 people. But it's in Kriviry in central Ukraine, which is President Zelensky's hometown. In his nightly address, he condemned the attack.

**Volodymyr Zelensky** (1:33)
A rescue operation is currently underway. This is an absolute atrocity committed by the Russians. They're nothing but beasts. We will definitely respond. It's crucial that we have everything we need to protect lives. It's important that the world doesn't remain silent about all of this.
This Russian war must come to an end, and the world must help us achieve that.

**Alex Ritzen** (1:53)
The authorities said that around 130 people were wounded, more than 20 of them children. Svetlana worked at a store in the shopping centre.

**Svetlana** (2:04)
I thought my earbuds had burst in my ear. Then mirrors started falling. I went out, thought it was all over, and started walking back and forth. Then I saw my friend who was covered in blood. I took a bottle of water. He was moving on his own but had lots of shrapnel wounds. I laid him down and an ambulance arrived and took him away.

**Alex Ritzen** (2:25)
I got the latest from our Ukraine correspondent, Dan Johnson.

**Dan Johnson** (2:29)
The search and rescue operations are still ongoing there, we're told, and so the death toll keeps rising. The number of wounded has been increasing. More than 100 people who were hurt in this, as well as those killed. It looks like a classic example of the worst kind of double tap attack, as it is called. We've had footage from the scene verified, which shows the first drone hitting the shopping centre, an explosion and a fire, and then President Zelensky said it was half an hour later that a second drone hit the centre once the first emergency responders were there, trying to treat those who had already been wounded. The video of that shows another, what appears to be a Shahed jet-powered drone diving from the sky towards the centre. You can actually hear Ukrainian soldiers or air defence units trying to shoot it down with machine gun fire, but they were unsuccessful, so that second drone has hit, causing more deaths and more injuries. The president, who is actually from Kriviri, the city where this happened, said this was a cynical attack and that he's been talking to the UN secretary general. I think that was a call that was set up anyway, but he's used the opportunity to highlight what he said was the Russian targeting of civilians in such a clear and cynical way.

**Alex Ritzen** (3:56)
Trying to shoot a drone like this down with machine guns doesn't sound ideal. I mean, are there better ways and does Kyiv have the technology that it needs?

**Dan Johnson** (4:08)
Air defences across Ukraine have been overstretched, particularly in terms of incoming missiles. The record in shooting down drones had been better. We know an air raid alert had gone out in Krivory, the city where this shopping centre was. There's actually been an investigation launched, the regional head of government has said, into why that centre was still open and some of the stores were open, despite the air raid alert. That's an indication of how relaxed some Ukrainians have become, because after four and a half years of hearing those sirens, not everybody reacts as suddenly as perhaps they would have at the start of this. But this is a jet-powered drone, we understand. At least that second one that we've been able to see on video. That is a relatively new innovation from the Russians. They've taken the old propeller-powered, motor-powered Shahid, which was relatively slow-moving. They've put a jet engine on that instead, which means it moves much faster and is much harder to shoot down. And by the time they're effectively firing at it with a machine gun from the back of a 4x4, that is really a last desperate effort to try to bring down a drone to save people. But by that point, it was already heading for its target and there was very little chance of actually stopping it doing the further damage that was inflicted.