Ukraine says at least 15 killed in shopping mall attack; Zelenskyy asks G-7 for more help as Russia attacks key cities

Russian missile strikes on a Ukrainian shopping mall killed at least 15 people and wounded 59 others, Ukraine's emergency services said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said on the Telegram messaging platform that more than 1,000 people were inside at the time of the rocket attack, NBC News reported.

"This is not an off-target missile strike, this is a calculated Russian strike — exactly at this shopping mall," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

— Chelsea Ong

G-7 leaders condemned a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian shopping mall that resulted in the death of innocent civilians.

"We stand united with Ukraine in mourning the innocent victims of this brutal attack. Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime," the leaders wrote in a joint statement.

"Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account," the statement added.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging platform that the strike on the mall in Kremenchuk had "no strategic value" and was not a site affiliated with Ukrainian armed forces.

The Kremlin has previously denied that it targets civilians.

"We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian as well as military support for Ukraine, for as long as it takes. We will not rest until Russia ends its cruel and senseless war on Ukraine," the G-7 leaders added.

 — Amanda Macias

Over the weekend, the Pentagon observed approximately 60 missile strikes across Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. Defense official.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to share details of U.S. intelligence assessments, said that a significant number of the strikes hit Kyiv, Lviv, Chernihiv and Odesa.

"We're not quite sure about the Russian objectives of the strikes. They certainly could be a protest against the G-7, or the arrival of HIMARS in the country," the official told reporters on a conference call.

The Defense official also said that the Pentagon assessed there to be civilian casualties in Kyiv following a strike that hit an apartment building.

"Not unusual to hear of civilian casualties associated with Russian strikes, sadly," the official added.

 — Amanda Macias

President Joe Biden is slated to announce at the NATO summit in Spain the extension of U.S. troops in Poland, multiple officials told NBC News.

The changes to the U.S. troop footprint could affect NATO member countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia,  according to the people familiar with the matter, who include two Defense officials, two former administration officials and a European official.

The officials told NBC News that several hundred U.S. troops may remain in Poland on a more permanent basis.

Since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Biden administration has deployed more than 100,000 U.S. troops to NATO-member countries.

 — Amanda Macias

President Joe Biden will meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday on the sidelines of the G-7 summit. Following the meeting, Biden will deliver remarks at the final session of the G-7 before traveling to Madrid, Spain.

In Spain, Biden will participate in the NATO leaders summit before holding a bilateral meeting with Spanish President Pedro Sánchez.

The two leaders will discuss ways to continue "supporting Ukraine and holding Russia accountable," according to a White House release.

 — Amanda Macias

Turkey's president says he will do "whatever is necessary for our country's rights and interests" at the NATO summit in Spain.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he'd provide documents and visuals on "terror groups," including Kurdish militant groups and the network of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen blamed for a 2016 attempted coup in Turkey, to show his counterparts the "hypocrisy" on terror.

Ankara has objected to Sweden's and Finland's bids to join NATO, citing what it considers to be a lax approach to groups Turkey deems national security threats, including the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and its Syrian extension.

Turkey has demanded the two Nordic countries extradite wanted individuals and lift arms restrictions imposed after Turkey's 2019 military incursion into northeast Syria.

"We will tell them clearly that it is not possible to expect a different attitude from Turkey unless this picture changes," he said after a cabinet meeting in Ankara.

— Associated Press

— Kacper Pempel | Reuters

The Biden administration raised the tariff rate on certain Russian imports to 35%, according to the White House.

The higher 35% duty applies to imports of "certain other products of the Russian Federation, the importation of which has not already been prohibited." It was not immediately clear what additional products would face the 35% duties.

The move follows the suspension of Russia's "most favored nation" trading status due to its ongoing war in Ukraine.

The Biden administration previously banned U.S. imports of Russian petroleum and energy products, fish, seafood, alcoholic beverages and non-industrial diamonds.

 — Amanda Macias

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian missile strikes targeted a shopping mall and innocent civilians, according to an NBC News translation.

Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging platform that the strike was in the Poltava region in central Ukraine.

"The occupiers fired rockets at the mall, where there were more than a thousand civilians. The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire and the number of victims is impossible to imagine," Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

"No strategic value. Only the attempt of people to live a normal life, which angers the occupiers. It is useless to hope for adequacy and humanity from Russia," he added.

The Kremlin has previously denied that it targets civilians.

 — Amanda Macias

WNBA star and two-time Olympian Brittney Griner, currently detained in Russia, will appear in court for her trial on Friday.

The 31-year-old professional athlete has been accused of smuggling hashish oil, a charge that carries up to 10 years in prison. Her arrest came days before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, triggering international backlash and a slew of punishing sanctions.

"The Department of State has determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Brittney Griner. The U.S. government will continue to provide appropriate support to Ms. Griner and her family. We will continue to ​press for her release," a State Department spokesman wrote in a statement to NBC News.

 — Amanda Macias

National security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that the U.S. is in the final stages of preparing a security package for Ukraine that includes advanced air defense capabilities. 

"We do intend to finalize a package that includes advanced medium- and long-range air defense capabilities for the Ukrainians, along with some other items that are of urgent need, including ammunition for artillery and counterbattery radar systems," Sullivan told reporters on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Krun, Germany.

"I won't get into the details of the system. I'll wait until the contract actually gets done," he said. He added that President Joe Biden informed his G-7 counterparts and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the upcoming security assistance package.

The U.S. has committed $6.1 billion in defense aid since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

 — Amanda Macias

The United Nations has confirmed 4,731 civilian deaths and 5,900 injuries in Ukraine since Russia invaded its ex-Soviet neighbor on Feb. 24.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the death toll in Ukraine is likely higher, because the armed conflict can delay fatality reports.

The international organization said most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, as well as missiles and airstrikes.

 — Amanda Macias

The NATO military alliance will increase the number of its forces at high readiness to over 300,000 from the current number of 40,000, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday.

"We will transform the NATO Response Force and increase the number of our high readiness forces to well over 300,000," said at a press conference on Monday, ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid that begins on Tuesday.

The summit would see NATO strengthen its forward defenses and enhance its battlegroups in the eastern part of the alliance, he said. "We will also boost our ability to reinforce in crisis and conflict," he added. It would do this with:

• More pre-positioned equipment, and stockpiles of military supplies.
• More forward-deployed capabilities, like air defense.
• Strengthened command and control.
• And upgraded defense plans, with forces pre-assigned to defend specific allies.

The NATO Response Force is a high-readiness force comprising land, air, sea and special forces units that are capable of being deployed quickly. The force currently comprises around 40,000 troops.

NATO's announcements come as the military alliance tries to best assist Ukraine in repelling the Russian invasion, with various NATO members sending arms to Kyiv, but trying to avoid a direct confrontation with nuclear power Russia.

NATO's summit will see its 30 member countries meet, as well as representatives from its allies. Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea will join the summit for the first time, and Georgia and the European Union will also take part.

— Holly Ellyatt

The G-7 — which comprises the world's most wealthy nations of the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Italy, Germany and Japan — has published a statement in which they affirm their continued support for Ukraine and committed to further punishing Russia on the economic front.

"We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes," the G-7 said in the communique on Monday.

The groups said it was committed to sustaining and intensifying international economic and political pressure on President Putin's regime and what it called "its enablers" in Belarus, depriving Russia of the economic means to persist in its war of aggression against Ukraine.

The targeted use of coordinated sanctions would, the group said, continue "for as long as necessary." Sanctions imposed on Russia so far were, the leaders said, "in defence of the rules-based international order that Russia has so egregiously violated." And there would be more sanctions, they noted.

"We will continue to explore new ways to isolate Russia from participating in the global market and crack down on evasion. We are determined to reduce Russia's revenues, including from gold. We will also continue to target evasion and backfilling activities," the G-7 said.

It added that it would further reduce Russia's export revenues by taking "appropriate steps to further reduce dependency on Russian energy," and "further restrict Russia's access to key industrial inputs, services, and technologies produced by our economies, particularly those supporting Russia's armament industrial base and technology sector."

Finally, the G-7 added that it will increase the costs of Russia's war on Ukraine by imposing targeted sanctions on those responsible for war crimes, exercising illegitimate authority in Ukraine, and those that it said were "standing behind Russia's engagement in efforts to increase global food insecurity by stealing and exporting Ukrainian grain or otherwise profit illegitimately from the war."

The group said it would assist the global economy and would take action to help mitigate spillover effects from the sanctions, especially relating to humanitarian and other basic needs, and vulnerable populations.

— Holly Ellyatt

President Zelenskyy has issued a statement on Telegram following his video address of G-7 leaders in Germany today:

"I addressed the G-7 leaders' summit in Schloss Elmau by video conference.  Ukraine feels the support of the G-7 states.  Thank you for your defense and financial assistance to our country in the fight against the Russian invasion.  For us, the consistent position of the G-7 countries on sanctions is also important. They should continue to increase, in particular by limiting the price of oil exported by the aggressor."

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has addressed the leaders of the Group of Seven nations that are gathered in Munich, Germany, and has pressed them for more help to end the war before winter sets in.

Zelenskyy has reportedly requested anti-aircraft defense systems to help protect Ukraine and has said he wants the war to end before the end of the year, Reuters reported citing two unnamed European officials present at the summit.

Addressing the leaders of the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, Zelenskyy also asked for more sanctions on Russia and security guarantees, Reuters said, citing one European official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Zelenskyy also reportedly asked for help to export grain from Ukraine and for reconstruction aid.

— Holly Ellyatt

Over the coming weeks, Russia's campaign in Ukraine "will highly likely increasingly rely on echelons of reserve forces," said Britain's Ministry of Defense.

Those consist of several distinct components which Russia has almost certainly already started to field, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter on Monday. 

"Russia's Combat Army Reserve is a recent innovation of part-time but volunteer reservists, which deploy as whole units typically ear-marked for rear area security tasks," the U.K. said.

In addition, it said Russia could call upon a "sizable pool of all veterans who have served in the regular military in the last five years," adding that Russian authorities are likely using volunteers from that category to fill out the third battalions within regular brigades.

"Despite a continued shortfall in the number of deployable reservists for Ukraine, the Russian leadership likely remains reluctant to order a general mobilisation," the ministry noted. 

While Russia's main operational focus remains the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk pocket, a week of consistently heavy shelling suggests Russia is now trying to regain momentum on the northern Izium axis, heading up toward the second-largest Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

"Ukrainian forces continue to hold the line in that sector, making good use of forested terrain to assist their defence," the ministry said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian forces are now reportedly trying to blockade the city of Lysychansk, the neighboring city to Severodonetsk which was fully seized by Russian forces over the weekend.

"In the Donetsk direction, the enemy, with the support of artillery, is trying to blockade the city of Lysychansk from the south," Oleksandr Shtupun, the spokesperson for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in his latest military update on Monday.

He said Russian forces are shelling civilian and military infrastructure in the areas of Lysychansk and the surrounding settlements.

The comments come after Russian forces seized full control of the next-door city of Severodonetsk on Saturday. The capture of the city, which lies opposite Lysychansk on the other side of the Siverskyi Donets river, came after Ukraine ordered the "tactical" retreat of its troops from the city after weeks of intense fighting there.

Ukraine said the withdrawal would allow its troops to fight from higher ground in Lysychansk.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia is nearing a historic debt default after a 30-day grace period on two international bond payments expired on Sunday night.

Interest payments on two eurobonds totaling $100 million were due on May 27, two days after the U.S. Treasury closed an exemption that had allowed Moscow to process foreign debt payments in dollars through U.S. and international banks, on a case-by-case basis.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has branded the situation a "farce" and claimed it does not constitute a genuine default, as Russia has ample cash and the willingness to pay, but has been prevented from doing so by international sanctions.

Read the whole story here.

— Elliot Smith

Everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine and NATO's defense strategy must now account for the new security environment on Europe's eastern flank. That's the coordinated message from the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ahead of NATO's all-important Madrid summit this week.

Bolstering the defense of the Baltic region is seen as one of the most important decisions for NATO leaders to take at the June 29-30 summit.

The 30-member military alliance is poised to reflect on how the group can respond to Europe's new security reality in the wake of Russia's onslaught in Ukraine.

"We need to move to deterrence by denial. We need a credible military construct on the Eastern flank that will deter Putin," a spokesperson at Estonia's foreign ministry told CNBC. Read the whole story here.

— Sam Meredith

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to call on world leaders gathered at the G-7 summit in Germany on Monday to take urgent action to get essential food supplies out of Ukraine.

The U.K. said it was working with its international partners on a plan to overcome what it called "the Russian stranglehold" on food exports, and said it will work with Ukraine to repair vital railways to use for exports instead.

"Putin's actions in Ukraine are creating terrible aftershocks across the world, driving up energy and food prices as millions of people are on the brink of famine," Johnson will tell the summit Monday, according to pre-released comments from Downing Street.

"Only Putin can end this needless and futile war. But global leaders need to come together and apply their combined economic and political heft to help Ukraine and make life easier for households across the world. Nothing should be off the table," Johnson will add.

The U.K. said it was working with its international partners on a plan to overcome what it called "the Russian stranglehold" on food exports, and said it will work with Ukraine to repair vital railways to use for exports instead.

Global food prices have risen since the start of the war as vital produce from Ukraine (seen as the "breadbasket of Europe") has been unable to leave the country because of a Russian blockade of Ukraine's ports, such as Odesa, preventing exports of wheat and oil.

Ukraine supplies 10% of the world's wheat, 12%-17% of the world's maize and half of the world's sunflower oil, the British government said in a statement previewing Johnson's comments. It said 25 million tonnes of corn and wheat — the annual consumption of all the least developed countries — can't be exported and is currently at risk of rotting in Ukrainian silos. "This problem is due to worsen dramatically with July's harvest," it noted.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to make an impassioned plea to the leaders of the Group of Seven (G-7) wealthy, industrialized nations, asking them for more heavy weaponry to combat Russian forces.

"Delays in the transfer of weapons to our state, any restrictions are actually an invitation for Russia to strike again and again," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Sunday.

He said Ukraine can stop Russia's aggression only "if we get everything we ask for, and just in time we need it — weapons, financial support, and sanctions against Russia."

He said there are no other options "because it is here — in the sky over Kyiv, in the sea near Odesa, on the land of the Kharkiv region, Donbas, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions — that it is being decided what life will be like in Europe in the future. Here, in Ukraine, and nowhere else."

Zelenskyy's comments come after Russia once again targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv over the weekend, after pulling its troops back from the city several months ago in order to focus on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

The southwestern port city of Odesa was also hit, as well as the regions around the port of Mykolaiv farther up the coast to the east, Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, the northeastern area around Kharkiv and the Donbas.

On Sunday morning U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed that the G-7 will announce a ban on Russian gold imports, confirming earlier reports of an imminent ban.

— Holly Ellyatt