Russia pressed on with its offensive in eastern Ukraine on June 30 after NATO branded Moscow the "biggest direct threat" to Western security and agreed plans to modernize Kyiv's beleaguered armed forces. Ukrainian authorities said they were trying to evacuate residents from the frontline eastern city of Lysychansk, the focus of Russia's attacks where about 15,000 people remained under relentless shelling. President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO leaders on Wednesday that Ukraine needs modern weapons and more financial aid in its fight against Russia's invasion. "We need to break the Russian artillery advantage. We need much more modern systems, modern artillery," Mr. Zelensky told a NATO summit in Madrid via video link. He added that financial support was "no less important than aid with weapons". As the 30 national NATO leaders were meeting in Madrid, Russian forces intensified attacks in Ukraine, including missile strikes and shelling on the southern Mykolaiv region close to front lines and the Black Sea. The mayor of Mykolaiv city said a Russian missile had killed at least five people in a residential building there, while Moscow said its forces had hit what it called a training base for foreign mercenaries in the region. A theatre sheltering civilians destroyed in March in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol was likely hit by a Russian airstrike in a war crime, Amnesty International said in a report published Thursday. "Until now, we were speaking about an alleged war crime. Now we can clearly say it was one, committed by the Russian armed forces," Oksana Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty's Ukraine branch, told AFP. "These explosions were caused by something really big: two 500-kilogram [1,100-pound] bombs" dropped from a plane, she added, dismissing Russian claims that the theatre was hit in a false-flag attack by the city's Ukrainian defenders.