Russian strike hits crowded mall, Zelensky says, amid push for aid at G-7

Lee Zion spent three decades building a journalism career, one that culminated four years ago when he spent $35,000 to buy his own newspaper. As the boss, Zion kept toiling as a jack-of-all-trades — writing columns, selling ads, assigning and editing stories — all to keep the citizens of western Nicollet County, Minn., informed about what was happening in their community.

Not anymore. Zion just gave away the Lafayette Nicollet Ledger to pursue a new line of work — going to Ukraine to possibly pick up a gun and fight.

“There is death going on,” Zion told The Washington Post, “and right now, I’m sitting here doing nothing to stop it.”

Zion, 54, has decided to effectively end a 32-year journalism career that has taken him to newsrooms across the country and even around the world while aboard an aircraft carrier. He had worked as a reporter, copy editor and editor before, in 2018, buying the Ledger, a weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 500 in southern Minnesota.

After Russia invaded Ukraine some 5,000 miles from the Ledger’s office, an idea flickered in his brain: What if he traveled halfway around the world to help?

Russia continued its blitz of airstrikes across Ukraine on Monday. More than a dozen civilians were killed in the attacks, leading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accuse Russia of becoming “the largest terrorist organization in the world.” A senior U.S. defense official said the motivation for the more than 60 airstrikes in recent days was unknown. It could be in protest of the Group of Seven summit or the arrival of advanced rocket systems to Ukraine, he said.

Here are some updates from across the country:

Central Ukraine: A Russian missile strike on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk killed at least 15 civilians and left scores injured, according to local officials. Zelensky said rescuers are still working to establish how many people are under the rubble, warning “the losses may be significant.”

Kharkiv: Another strike on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-largest city killed at least five people and wounded more than 30, five of them children. Zelensky said all of the casualties were civilians.

Donbas region: Russian forces haven’t yet encircled Lysychansk, their new target in eastern Ukraine after capturing the strategically important city of Severodonetsk, the U.S. defense official said Monday. “The Ukrainians are fighting very well, or very hard in that part of the battlespace,” he added. Ukrainian forces have been digging trenches around Lysychansk over the past week to seal the city to everyone but military and humanitarian rescue missions.

Kyiv: At least one person was killed in a weekend attack that hit an apartment building in Kyiv, disrupting an uneasy calm that had settled over the capital since Russia withdrew its forces from the area in April.

Kherson: Near this city in Ukraine’s south, occupied by Russian forces in the early days of the invasion, there are growing signs of resistance. An official with the U.S. Defense Department said Monday that it was aware of the assassinations of local Russian officials, as well as reports suggesting that Ukrainians have been successful in liberating several small towns northwest and west of Kherson.

TELFS, Austria— Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged President Biden and other Western leaders gathered here Monday to urgently provide Ukraine with heavy weaponry, a move he said would help drive Russia out of his country by winter.

Zelensky, clad in his trademark green and appearing virtually from his country to address leaders of the Group of Seven ensconced in a scenic Bavarian Alps retreat, sought “additional air defense capabilities that could shoot down missiles out of the sky,” according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

“He would like to see his military, and those in the West who are supporting his military, making maximum use of the next few months to put Ukraine in as good a position as they can possibly be in,” Sullivan said. That includes an ambitious goal of ousting Russia from Ukraine before winter weather bogs down forces on both sides, a difficult military feat whose success is uncertain.

A Russian missile strike on a shopping mall in central Ukraine killed at least 13 civilians and left scores injured, Ukrainian officials said Monday, adding further pressure to Western countries to supply antimissile systems to protect cities far from the eastern front lines.

The strike came amid a escalation in recent days, in which Russian missiles have pounded Ukrainian cities. Russia launched around 60 missile strikes over the weekend, according to a count by the Pentagon, including an attack that hit an apartment building in Kyiv, which left at least one person dead.

Ukrainian officials have said that Russia is deliberately attacking civilian targets and pleaded with Western nations for more supplies to defend themselves. In messages shared on social media, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that there were more than a thousand civilians present when the mall strike hit and that the final number of victims could be “impossible to imagine”

Shoppers present at the mall were “no danger to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram on Monday. It was “only the attempt of people to live a normal life, which so angers the occupiers.”

The rapid increase in missile strikes coincided with the Group of Seven summit in the Bavarian Alps of Germany. Leaders at the summit on Monday pledged to “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes” with plans to increase the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin through a price cap on Russian oil shipments, alongside other measures.

Brittney Griner will go on trial starting July 1 in Russia, where she has been detained for more than four months on a drug charge.

Her lawyer, Alexander Boikov, confirmed the start date for CNN after the handcuffed WNBA star made a brief appearance Monday for a preliminary hearing behind closed doors in a court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The court ruled that her detention be extended for six months pending her trial, Boikov added. He told the New York Times that he expected her trial could take up to two months, depending on the court’s workload.

Video from an NPR reporter showed the two-time Olympic gold medal winner entering and leaving court, apparently without commenting, in the custody of officials. She previously had been ordered to remain in pretrial detention until July 2.

WIMBLEDON, England — If it’s possible to feel the horror of invasion and war from afar and in a pristine place, that possibility welled Monday from the purple-and-green gentility of the smallish Wimbledon Interview Room No. 2. That’s where 33-year-old veteran player Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine spoke at length about the upended state of her mind, and said the absence of Russian and Belarusian players here had lent that mind some calm.

“I feel good being at the tournament without having to see players from that countries again,” she said of Wimbledon’s ban of those nationalities here. “In most of the cases it’s nothing personal. It’s just the situation that our countries are in a war now. So, yeah, for me it’s definitely less tension and I feel better.”

She said, “I don’t feel good seeing them because, as I have said before, it’s, again, it’s about me personally. I don’t know about other Ukrainian players, but I just heard one Belarusian player that she’s, like, she’s supporting us, me, and Ukraine, and she’s against the war. I haven’t heard anyone else that they are against the war. So I don’t know their opinion about that, and not speaking to me and not saying anything to me makes me feel bad and creating this tension inside of me.”

LONDON — Ukraine was not forgotten at England’s Glastonbury Festival, where some 200,000 attendees and 3,000 performers gathered over four days after a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic.

Some in the crowds held Ukrainian flags; others wore blue and yellow flowers in their hair. “Dance for Ukraine,” read a message on one of the giant flags, which also featured an image of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky surrounded by pink hearts.

On Friday, Zelensky appeared on big screens at the site and addressed festivalgoers in a video message. He asked people to continue spreading the truth about Russia’s invasion and to pressure politicians to further support his country’s defense.

“The more people join us in defending freedom and truth, the sooner Russia’s war against Ukraine will end,” Zelensky said.

The festival, which ran Wednesday through Sunday, featured performances from Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Diana Ross.

On Saturday, 80-year-old Beatles star Paul McCartney took the stage, becoming the festival’s oldest solo headline act. During the encore of his performance, he waved a large Ukrainian flag as crowds cheered.

On Sunday, Ukrainian folk band DhakaBrakha also performed on the Pyramid Stage, where the group showed footage of destruction caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The words “Arm Ukraine now” also flashed amid its performance.

Band members invited Eurovision’s 2016 winner, Jamala — who represented Ukraine — to join them onstage. Together they urged people to “stop Putin.”