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 Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv with a series of missile attacks Sunday, as leaders of the G7 nations gather in Germany for the first day of their annual summit.

The chief of Ukraine's national police force, Ihor Klymenko, said one person died and five were wounded in a Russian missile strike that hit a residential apartment block in Kyiv.

The injured included a 7-year-old girl, he said. Her mother, a 35-year-old woman named Katerina, was rescued from the rubble and put into an ambulance. She is a citizen of Russia, but had lived in Kyiv for a long time.

The man, whom police have described as a radicalised Islamist with a history of mental illness, is accused of killing two and injuring 21 early on Saturday, when Oslo was due to hold its Pride parade.

© Reuters/NTB Memorial service after the shooting in OsloSpeaking at a special service held at Oslo's cathedral, Stoere said the attack may have put an end to the official Pride parade, which was called off after the attack, but it did not stop the fight "against discrimination, prejudices and hate".

The premier, dressed in black, talked about the thousands of people that spontaneously demonstrated on Saturday in the streets of Oslo, waving rainbow flags and laying flowers at the crime scene to honour the victims.

© Reuters/NTB Memorial service after the shooting in Oslo"During the day, the city was full of people who wanted to speak out, about sorrow and anger, but also about support and solidarity and the will to continue on fighting, for the right of every individual to live a free life, a safe life," he said.

© Reuters/NTB Shooting in Oslo"These misdeeds remind us of this. This fight is not over. It is not safe from dangers. But we are going to win it, together," he told the audience - which included mourners, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, ministers and Church of Norway leaders - in the cathedral which was decorated with rainbow flags.

Authorities have said they had been aware of the suspect since 2015 and that he had been part of a network of Islamist extremists in Norway.

The suspect's lawyer, John Christian Elden, was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

 

A CNN team on the ground spoke to the injured girl's grandmother, Natalia Nikitina, who found out about the attack online and rushed to the apartment block, where she cried as she watched teams trying to rescue her daughter-in-law.

"There is nothing worse than losing loved ones. Why do we deserve this?" she said. A huge plume of smoke continued to billow from the building two hours after the strike, while nearly every window was blown out on the top floor, and the ground was covered in debris and twisted metal.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said "strategic bombers" were used to hit the capital, with "four to six missiles" launched. He added that on Saturday, Russia had used Tu22M3 long-range bombers from the airspace of Belarus for the first time in a Ukrainian air strike.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram there had been several explosions in the city's Shevchenkivskyi district, and that search and rescue operations were launched after a fire broke out when a residential building was hit by a rocket.

 

 

 

Rescue workers evacuate a person from a residential building damaged by a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, June 26, 2022.

"There are people are trapped under the rubble. Some residents have been evacuated, with two victims hospitalized. Rescuers are continuing their work," he said.

Speaking to CNN onsite, Klitschko said Russia's war on Ukraine was "senseless" and thousands of civilians had died, and added, "We have to do everything to stop this war."

The Ukrainian State Emergency Service said the fire was caused by "enemy shelling" and was over an area of 300 square meters, in "a 9-storey residential building with partial destruction of the 7th, 9th and 9th floors."

The same neighborhood was hit by a missile strike in early May, and was also targeted in March.

Vadym Denysenko, an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, said on Ukrainian television that there are "a number of military infrastructure facilities located in the Shevchenkivskyi district of the Ukrainian capital. This is the reason why the Russians are shelling this district."

US President Joe Biden called Sunday's attack "more of [Russian] barbarism." He declined to respond when asked whether the strikes were a deliberate provocation during the G7 summit.

Russian offensive continues in eastern Ukraine

After the key city of Severodonetsk was confirmed by Ukraine to be "completely under Russian occupation" on Saturday, the country's eastern Luhansk region is now almost entirely under Russian control. However, Ukrainian forces continue to defend the neighboring city of Lysychansk, which is coming under growing Russian artillery and rocket attacks.

 

The fight for Sloviansk may be 'the next pivotal battle' of Russia's war in Ukraine

On Sunday, the head of the neighboring Donetsk region's military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Russian forces were gathering for fresh assaults in the region, nearly half of which is under Ukrainian control.

"We are now witnessing the accumulation of manpower, heavy armored vehicles and artillery in the direction of Sloviansk," Kyrylenko said on Ukrainian television.

"The enemy is using its well-known tactics, trying to move closer to our line of defense in order to fire artillery at the cities. Enemy artillery is already reaching certain parts of Sloviansk. This is another confirmation that people should evacuate."

Throughout the offensive in the east, Russian forces have used intense artillery and rocket bombardment ahead of trying to take ground. They are attacking areas of Donetsk from three directions.

Kyrylenko said there had been a missile strike and rocket attacks on Kurakhove, a town on the southern front line in Donetsk that has been a target of Russian attacks for more than two months. Avdiivka had also been hit by rockets, he said.

The three top advisers to President Joe Biden arrived 13 minutes late for a meeting with the caucus on, according to the invitation sent to members, "messaging on the economy." The presentation and question-and-answer period that followed only served to exacerbate their frustration.

"Give us a plan or give us someone to blame," one House Democrat, describing the group's reaction to the White House's mid-June presentation. "They've been vacillating somewhere in between and that's not helpful to any of us."

 

 

It's a view -- and readout of the tone of briefing -- White House officials strongly dispute, noting Biden has laid out a plan and the oft-used "Putin's price hike" that reflects the direct correlation between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and energy price spikes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi later told reporters she was "very pleased and honored by their presentation." But the frustration that briefly spilled out during the briefing in the basement of the US Capitol encapsulates the Gordian knot Biden and his top advisers currently confront just five months before the midterm elections.

CNN spoke to more than a dozen senior administration officials, lawmakers and congressional aides over the course of several weeks as the White House has grappled with a convergence of factors that has come to consume Biden's second year in office. It's not the first time Biden's economic team as grappled with unexpected developments that one senior White House official categorized as "uncertainties that were very much unknown," and they point to a record of steady, if in their view underappreciated, success in confronting those challenges each step of the way.

"Over the last 18 months, as we have confronted a range of unanticipated global challenges -- from Covid variants to Putin's war -- the President's economic strategy has helped drive strong, shared growth and position the US to confront economic challenges from a position of economic strength," National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told CNN. "Throughout, the President has directed his team to approach each challenge with urgency, creativity, and focus, using every tool we can to resolve economic disruptions and mitigate their impact."

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But for an administration that ended last year forecasting a leveling off of 40-year high inflation and eager to tout a historically rapid recovery from the pandemic-driven economic crisis, there is a level of frustration that comes with an acutely perilous moment. Asked by CNN about progress on a seemingly intractable challenge, another senior White House official responded flatly: "Which one?"

 

 

America is on edge, and that's bad news for the White House

Instead of managing an economy in the midst of a natural rotation away from recovery and into a stable period of growth, economic officials are analyzing and modeling worst-case scenarios like what the shock of gas prices hitting $200 per barrel may mean for the economy.

Soaring prices, teetering poll numbers and congressional majorities that appear to be on the brink have created no shortage of reasons for unease. Gas prices are hovering at or around $5 per gallon, plastered on signs and billboards across the country as a symbolic daily reminder of the reality -- one in which White House officials are extremely aware -- that the country's view of the economy is growing darker and taking Biden's political future with it.

"You don't have to be a very sophisticated person to know how lines of presidential approval and gas prices go historically in the United States," a senior White House official told CNN.

A CNN Poll of Polls average of ratings for Biden's handling of the presidency finds that 39% of Americans approve of the job he's doing. His numbers on the economy, gas prices and inflation specifically are even worse in recent polls.

But the last two days have provided a clear public window into a moment that has driven increasingly urgent deliberations and debates inside the White House.

Biden, after months of weighing the idea, threw his support behind a federal gas tax holiday. A day later, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and senior White House advisers held a high-profile emergency meeting with oil and gas executives.

It was a period that attempted to demonstrate proactive administration action at a moment when White House officials are grappling with a challenge that is as devoid of clear-cut federal policy solutions as it is politically toxic.

"There's no silver bullet here," a senior White House official said of the broad effort inside the West Wing. "Yes, it would be great if Russia could withdraw from Ukraine and global energy supplies went back to normal."

And no, the official acknowledged, nobody in the administration is expecting that any time soon.

Biden and his administration are confronting a series of challenges that are straining the White House's ability to convince the public they're able to keep the country on the right track. The first major land war in Europe in 80 years has sent energy prices soaring. A global economy still emerging from a once-in-a-century pandemic has continued to rattle the supply chain. And, yes, a major and sustained surge in US consumer spending has continued to create pressures.

Taken together, those crises represent overarching problem that simply can't be resolved by the federal government in the short term.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi officially received Al-Kadhimi, who was slated to also meet with other officials in Tehran, according to the report. He was the first foreign leader to visit Iran after Raisi took power in August.

Al-Kadhimi’s office said Saturday he arrived in the Saudi city of Jiddah for an official visit to meet with Saudi officials. It was his second visit to Saudi Arabia since he took the post of prime minister in May 2020.

Iran, the largest Shiite Muslim country in the world, and Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties in 2016 after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Angry Iranians protesting the execution stormed two Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, fueling years of animosity between the nations.