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Russia gave an initial reaction to the news that NATO reached a deal to admit Sweden and Finland to the alliance, after Turkey dropped its opposition to the expansion.

“We consider the expansion of NATO a purely destabilizing factor in international affairs,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to a report by Ria Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

Restating Moscow’s “negative” view of the expansion, Ryabkov said it “does not add security” to either the prospective members nor the alliance as a whole, “nor to other countries that perceive the alliance as a threat,” Ryabkov added.

The deputy minister said the enlargement continued what Moscow sees as NATO’s “aggressive containment” strategy when it comes to Russia.

“We understand NATO’s rhetoric. A new strategic concept will be adopted, where Russia is going to be called a threat to the alliance. This has nothing to do with real life. It is the alliance that poses a threat to us,” Ryabkov said. 

“But we will do everything to ensure that our security and the security of our allies is ensured under any conditions, regardless of any expansionary waves, regardless of any agreements that could be reached on the eve of the Madrid summit between Ankara and Stockholm and Helsinki, in other formats,” he said.

Ryabkov’s comments come after the foreign ministers of Finland, Sweden and Turkey signed a memorandum on Tuesday to confirm that Ankara will back the Scandinavian countries’ NATO bids during a summit in Madrid this week.

The move was widely anticipated as one that would anger Moscow as it roughly doubles the land borders that Russia will have with NATO countries. Finland and Sweden both said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had changed the dial on membership and had reversed the rationale for their historically non-aligned statuses.

Russia has previously slammed the prospect of Finland — with whom it shares a 830 mile-long border —joining NATO, claiming it would “be forced” to retaliate if the long-neutral country joined the military alliance.

“Finland joining NATO is a radical change in the country’s foreign policy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement in May. “Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop threats to its national security arising.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia’s shortage of more modern precision strike weapons and the professional shortcomings of their targeting planners will highly likely result in further civilian casualties like those caused by Russia’s deadly strike on a Ukrainian shopping mall on Monday, the U.K. said on Wednesday.

The U.K.’s defense ministry said in its latest intelligence update that while there was a “realistic possibility” that Russia was targeting some kind of infrastructure target in the strike, it was not the first time that its targeting had been inaccurate, nor was it likely to be the last.

“Russia’s inaccuracy in conducting long range strikes has previously resulted in mass civilian casualty incidents, including at Kramatorsk railway station on 9 April 2022,” the ministry said on Twitter.

“Russian planners highly likely remain willing to accept a high level of collateral damage when they perceive military necessity in striking a target,” it added, noting that “it is almost certain that Russia will continue to conduct strikes in an effort to interdict the resupplying of Ukrainian frontline forces.”

The strike on the Amstor shopping mall in the Poltava province in central Ukraine on Monday killed at least 20 people and injured many others. Ukraine released footage of the strike last night:

It was decried as a war crime by the G-7 leaders who met earlier this week as the strike took place, but Russia said it was aiming at a nearby depot which is said contained Western arms given to Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials believe a Kh-22 missile was used in the strike although this has not been independently confirmed. Kh-22s are Soviet-era, long-range, anti-ship missiles that were first used in the 1960s. Military experts believe Russian forces could be turning to older, less accurate missiles as its stockpile of more modern ones runs low.

– Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine’s government has released footage showing the missile that hit the Amstor shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk in central Ukraine on Monday, a strike that killed at least 20 people and injured 59 others.

The video, which shows CCTV footage from a machinery plant near the mall on Monday, was shown in Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy nightly address on Tuesday, and posted on Facebook.

CNBC has not been able to independently verify that the missile is a Kh-22 as stated in the tweet, and has been stated by several Ukrainian officials.

Kh-22 missiles are large, long-range anti-ship missiles that were developed by the Soviet Union and first used in the early 1960s, intended for use against U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the Cold War.

The strike on the shopping mall was condemned as a war crime by Western leaders. For its part, Russia said it was targeting a depot of weapons donated by the U.S. and Europe that it said was located near the mall, a claim dismissed by Ukraine.

– Holly Ellyatt

At least 4,731 civilians have been killed since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though the actual figures likely to be far higher given the difficult nature of gathering accurate data during periods of war.

Matilda Bogner, head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said on Wednesday morning at a presentation on the human rights situation in the country that “civilians continue to bear the brunt of hostilities” in Ukraine.

Bogner said more than 10,000 people have been officially documented as being killed or injured, including several hundred children, between the start of the conflict on Feb. 24 and May 15. The data is largely based on field visits and interviews with victims and witnesses of human rights violations.

“I stress that the actual figures are considerably higher,” she added.

Russia attacks on civilian infrastructure, from homes to educational and places of worship, did not comply with international humanitarian law, Bognor said. On a much lower scale, it also appears that Ukrainian armed forces did not comply with the law in eastern parts of the country, she added.

— Holly Ellyatt

The NATO summit taking place in Madrid will be a historic one, its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday, with a deal on the table to admit new members and a proposal of a new “strategic concept” which would be a blueprint to, he said, “take NATO into the future in a more competitive and dangerous world.”

With the alliance set to shift its defenses, Stoltenberg said the summit would be a “historic and transformative” for the alliance.

NATO has already reached a deal to allow Sweden and Finland to join the alliance after Turkey dropped its opposition to the bid. It has also already announced that it will massively increase its rapid response force to 300,000, up from a current level of around 40,000 troops.

As he spoke to the press after arriving at the summit Wednesday, CNBC’s Hadley Gamble asked Stoltenberg about the timeline and structure of those additional troops.

“I expect them to be available and ready next year, that’s the plan. Those forces will be paid for and organized by the different allied NATO countries,” he noted, and would then be pre-assigned to specific NATO territories, most in the eastern part of the alliance, where they would train and become experienced with that terrain.

Pre-positioned heavy equipment and pre-assigned forces in certain countries would allow NATO to strengthen its deterrents and defenses, Stoltenberg said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia is responsible for “state terrorism” in Ukraine, with over 2,800 Russian missiles having hit its cities so far during the war.

In his latest address overnight, Zelenskyy said he had taken part in a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council, convened at the request of Ukraine on Tuesday, in order to “take advantage of all international levers to bring Russia to justice for state terrorism.”

“For everything done by the Russian army against Ukrainians in Kremenchuk, in Ochakiv, in Lysychansk, in Kharkiv, in Dnipro, in many, many other cities of Ukraine. As of this evening, the total number of Russian missiles that have hit our cities is already 2,811. And there are many more air bombs, many artillery shells,” he said.

The president noted that the U.N. Security Council today stood in silence to commemorate all Ukrainians killed by the Russian army so far during the conflict, noting that “the members of the Russian delegation looked at everyone present in the Security Council and also decided to stand up … but everyone knows that it is Russian terror, it is the Russian state that is killing innocent people in this war waged against the Ukrainian people.”

Russia has again been accused of war crimes after a Russian missile hit a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine. The strike killed at least 20 civilians shopping in the building and injured at least 59 people, with others still missing. Ukraine’s interior minister said yesterday that there were no survivors under the rubble because of the fire that spread through the building after the missile strike.

Russia has repeatedly denied that it has targeted civilians or civilian infrastructure despite multiple instances refuting those claims. It has also spread falsehoods and disinformation about such attacks; on Tuesday, Russia said it was targeting a depot of weapons donated by the U.S. and Europe near the mall, a claim dismissed by Ukraine.

— Holly Ellyatt

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has described the situation the country faces as a “hybrid war,” with the conflict in Ukraine having deep implications for the energy landscape in Europe, and Germany having to put plans in place in case its gas supplies — which are supplied via Nord Stream 1 from Russia to Germany — are cut by Moscow.

“We are faced now in Germany with the question now that if there’s no gas coming through Nord Stream 1 … we have to decide which institution may be cut off the grid,” Baerbock told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on Tuesday.

“We are in a time of war, in Ukraine people are dying, but we are in a hybrid war where the war is also being done [fought] by energy,” Baerbock said.

Germany is particularly reliant on Russian gas supplies via its Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Before the war, there were plans for this supply to be doubled with a second pipeline, Nord Stream 2, despite misgivings about the pipeline from the United States, Ukraine and other countries in eastern Europe, particularly Poland.

The giant energy infrastructure project, while fully built and ready to function, has been put on ice — perhaps permanently — because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

— Holly Ellyatt

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the world’s most powerful military alliance reached a deal to admit Sweden and Finland after resolving the concerns of holdout Turkey.

The push to add Sweden and Finland to the world’s most powerful military alliance comes as Russia’s assault on Ukraine amplifies fears of other countries in the region. Moscow, long wary of NATO expansion, has opposed the two nations’ plans to join the alliance.

Both Finland and Sweden already meet many of the requirements to be NATO members. Some of the requirements include having a functioning democratic political system, a willingness to provide economic transparency and the ability to make military contributions to NATO missions.

However, all 30 NATO members must approve a country’s bid for it to be accepted into the alliance.

— Amanda Macias

A satellite image by Planet Labs shows the destruction of a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging platform that more than 1,000 people were inside at the time of the Russian rocket attack, according to an NBC News report.

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

G-7 leaders condemned the Russian missile strike and pledged to hold “Russian President Putin and those responsible” to account.

The Kremlin has previously denied that it targets civilians.

— Amanda Macias

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the EU’s stocks of gas are increasing as the bloc looks to other suppliers aside from Russia, but added that the region must have contingency plans in case Russia cuts its supplies.

“There will have to be — particularly if Russia decides to cut supply altogether — contingency plans but [gas] stocks are increasing nicely. We’ve reached a good level of stocks … and if we complete the stocks we are able to manage this transition to the time when we will be completely independent from Russian gas,” he told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at a press conference.

Draghi said Europe had implemented measures to tackle the economic fallout of the conflict including diversifying its suppliers and investing in renewable forms of energy.

“We went all over [for other suppliers], and we’ve replaced a good deal of the Russia gas,” he said, noting that 40% of the EU’s gas supplies came from Russia last year, whereas now it was down to 25%.

A recession in Europe on account of the war in Ukraine is not an immediate forecast, Draghi also noted, saying: “For the time being, the economy of the euro area is slowing down but we don’t foresee a recession now. The Italian economy is actually going better than we expected a couple of months ago.”

— Holly Ellyatt

NATO strikes deal with Turkey to admit Sweden and Finland; Key G-7 countries ban Russian gold imports