Pictures taken around St. Valentine's Day uploaded on the Facebook page of Retroville, a shopping centre on the north-western outskirts of Kyiv, feature the usual commercial events you may see in a mall, but also show lots of smiling happy people and children having fun. It is hard to reconcile these images with what remains now of Retrovillle after it was hit by a Russian airstrike on Monday morning.
The attack, most probably a missile strike, left eight people dead. The missile destroyed the mall, the nearby Sportlife fitness centre and swimming pool, and blew up all the windows of the nearby buildings.
Opened in the early 2020, the shopping centre, boasting 250 shops, a multiplex cinema and a vast parking area with 3,000 places, was the commercial heart of an area that is still being developed. Some modern tower blocks are still in construction or they were recently finished and are still vacant.
Now the area looks like the set for a post-apocalyptic film complete with exploded cars and with the fitness centre reduced to a pile of steel. The attack was the most powerful to have hit Kyiv since the start of the Russian offensive on February 24.
Moscow claimed that the attack was due to the fact that Ukrainian military vehicles were being refueled with missiles in the area near the mall and the place was used as a warehouse for weapons and ammunition. But, in the last few weeks, this has been the excuse used by Russians to justify attacks on civilian infrastructure including hospitals, schools and theatres.
The loss of human lives is obviously more tragic than the loss of a mall. But the attack also makes you think about commercial spaces and architectures in times of war.
Usually when you open a shop, you cover your business with an insurance policy. Different policies may cover different things and there are insurance companies that also allow owners to cover one's premises from acts of terrorism or earthquakes (quite often these are considered as extra services and you have to pay for them separately on top of your ordinary insurance policy). Most shop insurance policies do not cover loss, damage and destruction caused by war or warlike operations, and contamination caused by pollution, radioactivity, waste, or nuclear fuels.
Now, "Retroville" included a wide range of stores and shops, quite a few of them from globally renowned brands such Adidas, Reebok, Skechers, Timberland, Calzedonia, Intimissimi, Tezenis, Under Armor, Pandora, Samsung, Vodafone, Terranova, Victoria's Secret, McDonald's, KFC and Leroy Merlin.
These brands have main offices in other countries and, while quite a few of them have shut their operations in Russia in solidarity with the war in Ukraine, you naturally wonder what they will do now that they saw their premises being destroyed by missiles. Sure, most of these brands are strong and wealthy enough to be able to open a store somewhere else in just a few weeks' time, but this is not the point, as the missiles destroyed lives, a commercial space and, consequently jobs and, even if the war stopped tomorrow, it would take a few years to rebuild the area and get brands to reopen their premises there.
Who pays for the damages? Well, it would be good if all these brands and the others in the mall would ask for damages to Russia and in particular to Russian President Putin.
The event leads us to wonder if in a dystopian future world we will have insurance policies covering also wars. Besides, the attack also makes you think about retail and fashion business journalism: the fashion industry news often feature a variety of articles and features about which brands are opening or closing stores in different cities around the world. Usually they feature information about how many floors the new shops have, which architects worked on the stores/boutiques and on the interior décor. Details are usually also provided about the location of the store - at times a vibrant neighborhood, in other cases a commercial mall.
So, what now if the war continues, will we start having sections dedicated to all the stores that will be destroyed and the jobs that will be lost? Let's hope it won't come to this. In the meantime, leaders from the 27-nation EU gather in Brussels on Thursday to talk about longer-term financial support mechanisms for Ukraine to provide the country support for its immediate needs and for the reconstruction after the war. While obviously these are great news, it wouldn't hurt to sue Putin for damages.
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