Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, June 28.
Get the latest updates here.
Fighting
- Russian missiles hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk, Poltava, killing at least 18 people and wounding 59 others, officials said. More than 40 people have been reported missing.
- More than 1,000 people were inside when two Russian missiles slammed into the shopping mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He called the strike “one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history”.
- Russian forces and Moscow-backed separatists now control part of an oil refinery in the city of Lysychansk, Moscow state news agency TASS reported. The governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces are storming the town of Lysychansk from the west and southwest.
- Five people were killed and more than 30 people were wounded in Russian attacks on Kharkiv on Monday, Zelenskyy said.
Diplomacy
- US President Joe Biden plans to announce an extension of US troop presence in Poland and changes to US deployments in several Baltic nations that he authorised ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NBC News has cited officials as saying.
- Any encroachment on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula by a NATO member state could amount to a declaration of war on Russia which could lead to “World War III,” Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, has been quoted as saying.
- The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday on Russia’s targeting of civilians, with the Kremenchuk attack being “the main focus”, the UN body stated.
Economy
- The Group of Seven (G7) club of wealthy nations pledged to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, promising new sanctions.
- The White House said Russia had defaulted on its foreign sovereign bonds for the first time in a century – an assertion Moscow rejected.
- Biden raised the tariff rate on certain Russian imports to 35 percent as a result of suspending Russia’s “most favoured nation” trading status.
