Russia-Ukraine crisis live updates | Russian forces turn sights on Lysychansk in battle for eastern Ukraine

Here are the latest developments from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict on June 27, 2022

Russian forces were fighting on June 27 to achieve one of their strategic objectives in Ukraine as Moscow-backed separatists said they were pushing into Lysychansk, the last major city still held by Ukrainian troops in eastern Luhansk province. Lysychansk's twin city of Sievierodonetsk fell on Saturday in a victory for Moscow's campaign to seize the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk on behalf of pro-Russian separatists.

Russian missiles struck an apartment block and close to a kindergarten in Kyiv on Sunday as world leaders gathered in Germany to discuss further sanctions against Moscow. Deputy Mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said one person was killed and six wounded in the first Russian attack on the capital in weeks. In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a wounded seven-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of a nine-storey apartment block. The girl's father was killed in the strike, he said.

Russian missiles also on Sunday struck the central city of Cherkasy, which until now had been largely untouched by bombardment, according to authorities who said one person was killed and five others wounded. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the attack also hit a strategic bridge linking western Ukraine and the eastern battlefields. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what the Kremlin called a “special military operation” to rid the country of far-right nationalists and ensure Russian security.

Here are the latest updates:

President Volodymyr Zelensky will urge world powers to step up their support for Ukraine when he addresses the G7 summit on Monday, as Kyiv reels from the first Russian strikes on the capital in weeks. U.S. President Joe Biden and his counterparts from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies, meeting in the Bavarian Alps, have stressed their unity in the face of Russia’s aggression — even as the global fallout worsens.

Mr. Zelensky is set to join the leaders of the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Canada via video link at 10:00 a.m. In his daily address late Sunday, Mr. Zelensky renewed his calls for more weapons and air defence systems to be delivered to Ukraine and for fresh sanctions against Russia by G7 nations. - AFP

The war in Ukraine could allow illegal drug production to flourish, while the opium market’s future hinges on the fate of crisis-wracked Afghanistan, the United Nations warned Monday. Previous experience from the Middle East and Southeast Asia suggests conflict zones can act as a “magnet” for making synthetic drugs, which can be manufactured anywhere, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual report.