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

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attacks on Kherson, which damaged a hospital and residential buildings.

“Today, all day long, the Russian army brutally shelled Kherson. Residential buildings, various social and transport facilities, including a hospital, post office, bus station, were damaged,” he said in his nightly address.

“Two women, nurses, were injured in the hospital. So far, there are reports of six injured and three dead.”

The Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine has been raging for more than 11 months, the conflict continues to cause huge losses and force the massive displacement of millions of innocent Ukrainians.

Vladimir Putin started the war by declaring that Russia’s western neighbor needed to be “demilitarized and denazified”, a completely baseless pretext for seizing the lands of an independent state whose president is a Jew.

Since then, Ukraine has bravely fought back and continued to defy circumstances, defending itself against Russian attacks with Western military assistance.

Read more from Thomas Kingsley and Joe Sommerlad:

Senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi is due to visit Moscow in February, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported on Monday, citing two sources.

According to the publication, Vanga may visit Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the sources said.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the report.

Slovenian security agencies have arrested two people suspected of spying for Russian military intelligence, the Ljubljana newspaper Delo reported on Monday, citing sources.

The report says that the suspects, one of whom has the citizenship of a South American country, acted under assumed names from a rented office in the Ljubljana district of Bezigrad.

The two suspects are charged with espionage and the use of forged documents. If convicted, they could face up to eight years in prison, the report said.

The Slovenian intelligence agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report when it contacted Reuters.

Russia has deployed additional forces and equipment to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine to protect the state border and ensure security, regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Monday, Interfax reports.

Local authorities say the region has come under repeated Ukrainian shelling since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago.

Part of the Russian troops entered from the Kursk region, although the areas of northeastern Ukraine they captured have since been recaptured by Kyiv troops.

Starovoit said at a meeting of the regional government that a solid contingent of personnel of the armed forces, border guards and law enforcement agencies had already been formed in Kursk, but “it is necessary to comprehensively ensure 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 increasing joint military activity in Belarus, another close Russian ally, another of the February invasion bases, about 200 kilometers west of Kursk Oblast. .

Ukrainian firefighters put out a burning house after the artillery shelling of Kherson.

Ryanair is hiring a significant number of Ukrainian pilots and flight attendants to be ready to return to the country after the end of the war with Russia, CEO Michael O’Leary said on Monday.

“We are determined to return to Ukraine as soon as it is safe,” said O’Leary, who on the eve of the conflict said he was considering stationing up to 20 aircraft in the country.

“We are hiring enough Ukrainian pilots and flight attendants specifically so that we can… re-establish 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 in the previous 24 hours has killed at least five people and injured 13 more, Ukrainian authorities said Monday as Kremlin and Kyiv forces continue fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Oleg Sinegubov, the governor of the region, said the injured include a woman who died and three others who were injured in Russian shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the country’s northeast.

The Kremlin said on Monday that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lied when he said Vladimir Putin had threatened him with missiles during a phone call ahead of an invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Johnson’s words are not true, but “more precisely, lies.”

Johnson, in an interview with the BBC for the documentary, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile attack that “would only take a minute.”

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

On Monday, Russia said it wanted to take relations with China to a “new level” and was looking forward to face-to-face talks with the Beijing leadership as a Russian newspaper reported that a senior Chinese diplomat would visit Moscow in February.

“We are convinced that the potential of bilateral Russian-Chinese cooperation is far from being exhausted,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

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

The West is watching with some dismay the deepening “borderless” partnership between rising superpower China and natural resource titan Russia, though it’s not clear how deep that partnership goes.

China refrains from condemning Russia’s operation against Ukraine and does not call it an “invasion” in the wake of the Kremlin, which calls the war a “special military operation.”

After the West imposed the harshest sanctions in modern history on Moscow over the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was turning towards Asia – and in particular China – after centuries of looking to the West as a crucible of economic growth, technology . and war.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s comments came shortly after the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported that China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, was due to visit Moscow in February.

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

When asked about Wang Yi’s possible visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said during a regular briefing that she was not yet aware of such a meeting.