Ukraine Russia latest news: Putin shells Kherson ‘all day’ with hospital hit

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the strikes on Kherson which damaged a hospital and residential buildings.

“Today, the Russian army has been shelling Kherson atrociously all day. Residential buildings, various social and transport facilities, including a hospital, post office, and bus station, have been damaged,” he said in his nightly address.

“Two women, nurses, were wounded in the hospital. As of now, there are reports of six wounded and three dead.”

Slovenia’s state security agencies have arrested two men suspected of spying for the Russian military intelligence service, the Ljubljana-based Delo newspaper reported on Monday, citing sources.

The suspects, one of whom has citizenship of a South American country, operated under assumed identities from a rented office in the Ljubljana neighbourhood of Bezigrad, the report said.

The two suspects have been charged with espionage and using false documents. If convicted, they may face jail terms of up to eight years, the report said.

Slovenia’s intelligence agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report when contacted by Reuters.

Russia has moved additional forces and equipment to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine to protect the frontier and ensure security, regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Monday, according to Interfax news agency.

Local authorities say that the region has repeatedly been subjected to Ukrainian shelling since Russia invaded Ukraine almost a year ago.

Some of Russia‘s troops entered from the Kursk region, although the areas of northeastern Ukraine that they seized have since been retaken by Kyiv’s forces.

Starovoit told a meeting of the regional government that a solid contingent of personnel from the armed forces, border guards and law enforcement agencies had already been formed in Kursk, but that “it is necessary to provide comprehensive support for the reception, deployment and arrangement of additional forces”.

Kyiv has repeatedly warned that Russia could make a new attempt to seize parts of northeastern Ukraine, pointing to increased joint military activity in Russia‘s close ally Belarus, another of the staging points for February’s invasion, around 200 km (120 miles) west of Kursk province.

Ukrainian firefighters douse flames in a burning house following Russian shelling in the city of Kherson.

Ryanair is hiring significant numbers of Ukrainian pilots and cabin crew so that it will be ready to return to the country when the war with Russia ends, Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said on Monday.

“We are very committed to returning to Ukraine as soon as it is safe to do so,” said O’Leary, who had said on the eve of the conflict that he was considering basing up to 20 aircraft in the country.

“We are hiring quite a number of Ukraine pilots and cabin crew specifically so that we can … restore bases in Ukraine if and when it is safe to do so,” O’Leary told analysts after the release of third-quarter financial results.

Russian shelling killed at least five people and wounded 13 others during the previous 24 hours, Ukrainian authorities said Monday as the Kremlin’s and Kyiv’s forces remained locked in combat in eastern Ukraine.

The casualties included a woman who was killed and three others who were wounded by the Russian shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second-largest city in the country’s northeast, according to regional Gov. Oleh Syniyehubov.

The Kremlin said on Monday that former British prime minister Boris Johnson was lying when he said Vladimir Putin had threatened him with a missile strike during a phone call in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that what Johnson said was not true, or “more precisely, a lie”.

Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would “only take a minute”.

“He threatened me at one point, and he said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that,” Johnson said.

Russia said on Monday that it wanted to take ties with China to a “new level” and was looking forward to face-to-face talks with Beijing’s leadership as a Russian newspaper reported that China’s top diplomat would visit Moscow in February.

“We are convinced that the potential for Russian-Chinese bilateral cooperation is still far from exhausted,” Russia‘s foreign ministry said.

Russia aims to reach its target of $200 billion worth of trade between the two countries ahead of schedule and to “significantly deepen” its ties with Beijing, it said.

The deepening “no limits” partnership between the rising superpower of China and the natural resources titan of Russia is being watched by the West with some anxiety, though it is unclear just how deep the partnership is.

China has refrained from condemning Russia‘s operation against Ukraine or calling it an “invasion” in line with the Kremlin which casts the war as “a special military operation”.

After the West imposed the most severe sanctions in modern history on Moscow due to the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin says Russia is turning towards Asia – and China in particular – after centuries of looking to the West as the crucible of economic growth, technology and war.

The Russian foreign ministry’s comments came shortly after Russia‘s Vedomosti newspaper reported that China’s chief diplomat Wang Yi was set to visit Moscow in February.

According to the newspaper, Wang may visit Putin during his stay. The purpose of Wang’s visit is unclear but may be related to preparations for an upcoming visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, it added.

When asked about the potential visit by Wang Yi, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a regular briefing that she was not yet aware of such a meeting.

Iran summoned Ukraine‘s charge d’affaires in Tehran on Monday over his country’s comments on a drone strike on a military factory in the central Iranian province of Isfahan, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

In Ukraine, which accuses Iran of supplying hundreds of drones to Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukrainian cities far from the front, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky linked the incident directly to the war there.

“Explosive night in Iran,” Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted on Sunday. “Did warn you.”

A US official told Reuters that Israel appears to have been behind the attack.

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but says they were sent before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

Moscow denies its forces use Iranian drones in Ukraine, although many have been shot down and recovered there.

Russian missile strikes killed three people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson while fighting raged in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia again shelled the key town of Vuhledar, Ukrainian officials said.