"The Russian strike today on the shopping center in Kremenchuk is one of the most brazen terrorist acts in European history," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as posted on Telegram.
Dmytro Lunin, the governor of the Poltava region where Kremenchuk is located, said the death toll had risen from 10 to at least 13, with more than 40 people wounded.
Russia's "brutal" missile strike on a crowded shopping mall in central Ukraine constitutes a war crime, G7 leaders said on Monday, vowing that Vladimir Putin and those responsible would be held to account.
"Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime," the leaders said in a statement as they "solemnly condemn the abominable attack" in Kremenchuk city.
The Ukrainian defense ministry said the strike was deliberately timed to coincide with the mall's busiest hours and cause the maximum number of victims.
Defense officials say Kh-22 anti-ship missiles were fired from Tu-22 bombers from the region of Kursk in western Russia.
"The missile fire on Kremenchuk struck a very busy area which had no link to the hostilities," the city's mayor Vitali Maletsky wrote on Facebook.
Lunin denounced the attack as a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity", saying it was a "cynical act of terror against the civilian population."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, on Twitter, that "the world is horrified by Russia's missile strike today, which hit a crowded Ukrainian shopping mall -- the latest in a string of atrocities".
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the attack demonstrated the "depths of cruelty and barbarism" of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
And the French foreign ministry also condemned the attack.
"By indiscriminately bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure, Russia continues its appalling violations of international humanitarian law," it wrote on Twitter.
The Russian military said on Tuesday it struck a weapons depot in central Ukraine the previous day and the resulting explosions hit a "closed" shopping mall.
The strike hit "a depot with weapons and ammunition from the USA and European countries in the vicinity of the Kremenchuk automobile factory", the army said in a statement. "The explosions of ammunition for Western weapons sparked a fire in the nearby shopping mall, which was "not operational" at the time."
