When the short existence of “Retroville” as the newest, largest and most sophisticated shopping center in Ukraine came to an end, all of Kyiv felt it.
My own windows were shaking so badly that I thought the explosion had happened on a nearby street, not five miles from Podolsky, a business center in the northwest of the city.
“The loudest explosion I’ve ever heard!” said a contact in the nearby Obolon district, which has suffered more than its fair share of bombings in Putin’s dirty war.
The impact hit Retroville shortly before 11 p.m. local time on Sunday. A Russian ballistic missile is suspected to be the culprit.
Richard Pendlebury visited the site of a destroyed Ukrainian shopping center believed to have been hit by a Russian ballistic missile, the blast also damaged a nearby apartment building.
Retroville was a major shopping center in Kyiv that was attacked because the Russians believed it was used to store missile systems.
The footage (pictured) shows the moment a large mall was destroyed and destroyed by Russia.
Of course, propaganda footage from CCTV cameras and Russian drones showed a flash of light from the sky, followed by a huge fireball that could be seen for miles across the rooftops. Eight people are known to have died as a result of the explosion.
On another fine spring morning, marred by air raid sirens, checkpoint halts and distant artillery fire, the Mail set off to survey the aftermath.
The Apple Maps app we used to get to the mall was still considered open for business. It is clear that Silicon Valley has not yet caught up with the events here.
The name Retroville remained almost 20 feet high against the sky, but the good news ended there. Behind the shabby façade was no longer 100,000 square meters of 21st-century, ultra-modern consumer fantasy landscape, but a jumble of broken concrete and mangled metal.
The point of impact was at the rear of the high-rise building. The epicenter was the health club Sport Life, “the largest fitness center in Ukraine.”
The big red SPORT letters were still visible, but balanced on the largest of several giant piles of rubble. Beneath it all, a local told me wistfully, was what was left of a large heated pool and jacuzzi.
Kyiv mayor and wartime totem Vitali Klitschko attended the opening of Retroville in May 2020, after hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in its construction over seven years.
“This is an important and long-awaited moment,” the developers said at the time. “We have not slowed down the pace of construction of the mall… even during the difficult period of quarantine due to the coronavirus.”
According to them, it was “a unique concept, a true center of lifestyle.”
A police officer stands guard at the rubble of a shopping mall in Kyiv damaged by Russian airstrikes amid the Russian invasion.
At least 4 dead in Russian attack on mall (pictured)
Aerial footage from the Russian Defense Ministry shows a missile hitting a shopping center in Kyiv.
In addition to the mega-gym, Retroville boasts – or rather, boasts – the first multiplex cinema in Kyiv “with the new ScreenX technology” and the largest food court in the city.
Around the entrance, the logos of a number of international brands have been preserved – H&M, Timberland, Lacoste and McDonald’s, which opened outlets under its roof.
But some of them looked pretty exhausted yesterday due to the damage from the explosion, while others disappeared altogether.
On the sidewalk was the letter N of the giant green logo of the Novus supermarket chain, the Ukrainian equivalent of Tesco or Sainsbury’s.
And the mall’s once-proud façade has been torn down, revealing its complex guts of heating pipes.
Considering the force of the explosion, it is not surprising that the collateral damage was significant. However, it was still unsettling to see the consequences for the newly built Varshavsky residential complex next door.
All the windows in the nearby 25-story building were smashed, curtains fluttering on the balconies in the wind.
On the outskirts of every city in Europe, there are estates that are being marketed as elegant city living overlooking the countryside. The ground floor has artisan coffee shops, restaurants and chi chi parlors. But now there was also a sea of glass, and the doors of the Training Academy and a number of other enterprises were torn off their hinges.
The workers arrived with the most demanded material in Kyiv – plywood, and the residents left with hand luggage and children’s toys.
No, one old lady told me, she didn’t want to relive last night for me. But she had one message to the world: “I want the death of Putin and all his accomplices.” Look what they are doing!
Galina, a widowed accountant, invited me to her 12th-floor apartment overlooking ground zero so I could better appreciate her luck in not being hit by the disaster. We had to climb the stairs because the elevator was no longer working. Who needs a sports life? Climbing high-rise buildings is a new type of city-wide fitness regime imposed on the population by the Kremlin.
She bought her two-room apartment exactly 12 months ago, after the death of her husband.
It was full of light, with great views. But it was also littered with shards of glass and entire window frames that had been blown across the rooms after being hit by a rocket. Her front door buckled against the frame in a shockwave.
“I was sitting at my desk doing a little work and browsing the news when it happened,” she said. “I was covered in shards of glass. But, fortunately, the curtains were drawn, and I taped the windows with a lot of tape so as not to get hurt.
According to her, the flame “was like hellfire.” Workers cleared the rubble for her, but for now, she’ll be living with a neighbor on the other side of the block.
The obvious question is why did the Russians attack Retroville? Purely in order to intimidate the population and destroy Kiev infrastructure, as some locals told me. A perfectly plausible explanation, given what is happening all over Ukraine.
But in such places, the lines between the front line and civilian areas are blurred. Moscow said last night that the mall was shelled because it was used to store missile systems.
While I was talking with Galina, her apartment was suddenly filled with a terrible roar and crying. It came from a nearby field, where I could see the Ukrainian Grad missile system firing shells at forward targets in Gostomel or Bucha.
Galina also told me that she saw secondary explosions after the first explosion in Retroville, and the Ukrainian bomb disposal team carried out controlled explosions on site while we were there. Colleagues saw live shells scattered by the explosion.
But was it necessary to hit Retroville with something big enough to destroy not only the entire complex, but also the surrounding area? Or start this dirty war, for that matter?
I am writing this at the corner table of the restaurant “For Two Hares” on Andreevsky Descent. It belongs to Tatiana Mitrofano, who was the author of the sculpture of a trident made from 1.5 million cut tulips near St. Sophia Cathedral, which I wrote about yesterday.
A pianist was playing in the back room, and Tatiana was busy planning her next big happening to boost her city’s morale. “Something to do with paint,” she told me.
At the next table, a soldier of the Territorial Defense Detachment was drinking coffee, leaning his rifle against a bench with velvet buttons. Outside, the faint sounds of battle could be heard along the beautiful cobbled street. Kyiv remains defiant. But Retroville is now almost a thing of the past.