Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
The latest in a litany of horrors in Ukraine came this week as Russian firepower rained down on civilians in a busy shopping mall far from the front lines of a war in its fifth month.
The timing was not likely a coincidence.
While much of the attritional war in Ukraine's east is hidden from sight, the brutality of Russian missile strikes on a mall in the central city of Kremenchuk and on residential buildings in the capital, Kyiv, unfolded in full view of the world and especially of Western leaders gathered for a trio of summits in Europe.
Were the attacks a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin as the West sought to arm Ukraine with more effective weapons to bolster its resistance, and to set Ukraine on the path to joining the European Union?
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko suggested as much when missiles struck the capital on June 26, three days after EU leaders unanimously agreed to make Ukraine a candidate for membership.
It was "maybe a symbolic attack" as the Group of Seven leading economic powers and then NATO leaders prepared to meet and apply further pressure on Moscow, he said. At least six people were killed in the Kyiv strike, which pummelled an apartment building.
The former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, went further in connecting the attack and the meetings. "The Russians are humiliating the leaders of the West," he said.
A day after the Kyiv attack, as G-7 leaders met in Germany to discuss further support for Ukraine during their annual summit, Russia fired missiles at a crowded shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, killing at least 19 people.
The timing of both attacks appeared to be juxtaposed with the European meetings of U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, all supporters of Ukraine.
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.
------
Fakahany reported from London.
Do you have any questions about the attack on Ukraine? Email dotcom@bellmedia.ca.
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
It’s the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule with a crew on board, a pair of NASA pilots who will check out the spacecraft during the test drive and a weeklong stay at the space station.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.