Ukraine Russia war latest news: Kyiv fighting ‘for every metre’ as France says it’s open to sending fighter jets

A Russian-backed official has made fresh claims of capturing Ukraine’s territory in the eastern region, but added that its troops were facing fierce resistance from Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting for “every metre”.

Denis Pushilin, head of the occupied eastern Donetsk province and installed by Russia, claimed that the Ukrainian fighters were countering the Russian offensive with reinforcements in Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar — three towns placed in eastern Ukraine’s north to south strip.

Russian forces were making advances there, but “not clear-cut, that is, here there is a battle for literally every metre”, he said, reported Russia’s state news agency TASS.

President Emmanuel Macron said France was open to sending fighter jets to Ukraine, but laid out multiple conditions before such a significant step might be taken.

France has sent Ukraine air defence systems, rocket launcher units, cannons and other military equipment and has pledged to send armoured surveillance and combat vehicles, but has stopped short of sending battle tanks or heavier weaponry.

Asked at a news conference in The Hague on Monday if France is considering sending warplanes, Mr Macron said “nothing is excluded” as long as certain conditions are met.

Among those conditions: that providing such equipment would not lead to an escalation of tensions or be used “to touch Russian soil”, and that it would not “weaken the capacities of the French army”, Mr Macron said.

He also said Ukraine would have to formally request the planes.

Allies have held back from pledging war planes over fears of a Russian response but after several states took the previously unthinkable step of sending tanks, the terms of support for Ukraine have changed.

US president Joe Biden said on Monday he will visit Poland but does not know when.

NBC News reported last week Mr Biden was considering a trip to Europe, including possibly Poland, to coincide with the 24 February anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The former Downing Street incumbent made the claim in a new three-part series for BBC Two looking at how the West grappled with Mr Putin in the years leading up to the war in Ukraine.

Mr Johnson, talking about a phone call between the two leaders ahead of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, said: “He sort of threatened me at one point and said: ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute,’ or something like that.”

In Putin vs the West, David Cameron, François Hollande, Jose Manuel Barroso and the rest of the gullible talking heads are mostly filmed in front of impressively full bookcases or inside what look like ornately furnished palaces.

Juxtaposed with bombed-out Ukrainian schools or tanks rolling down Crimean roads, this makes them look rather detached from the bloody reality they allowed to happen.

This is the latest series from the legendary Norma Percy, and the three-parter contains everything you’d expect from the veteran documentarian – the right blend of revelation, anecdote, history, drama, forensic analysis and storytelling.

It’s Putin, the Ukraine war and how the West fouled up, all made comprehensible. It’s brilliant, and you have to watch it to understand how we got to where we are now.

Russia has begun its “big revenge” for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday, as Russian forces claimed a series of incremental gains in his country’s east.

Mr Zelensky has been warning for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.

He said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side, casting them as payback for Ukraine‘s success in pushing Russian forces back from the capital, northeast and south earlier in the conflict.

“I think that Russia really wants its big revenge. I think they have [already] started it,” Zelenskiy said.

“Every day they either bring in more of their regular troops, or we see an increase in the number of Wagnerites,” he told reporters in the southern port city of Odesa.

Mr Biden was addressing reporters upon his return to the White House when he was asked if the US would offer the single-engine multirole fighters to Kyiv.

The president’s statement comes amid a renewed push by Pentagon officials to provide the jets, which are manufactured by Lockheed Martin and used by a variety of US allies, in the wake of his decision to allow Kyiv to acquire American-made M1 Abrams tanks.

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Slovenian authorities have apprehended two alleged Russian spies suspected of using an agency dealing in real estate and antiques as a front for their activities in the Nato member, media reported Monday.

Slovenia’s respected Delo newspaper and the Siol news portal cited the public prosecutor’s office as confirming the arrests.

Slovenian police confirmed that two individuals had been arrested in December for suspected espionage but did not disclose which country they were accused of working for.

“They are suspected of being members of a foreign intelligence service,” police spokesman Drago Menegalija said.

The Kremlin has suggested Boris Johnson told “a lie” when the former prime minister said that Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to threaten him with a missile strike.

The former Downing Street incumbent made the claim in a new three-part series for BBC Two looking at how the West grappled with Mr Putin in the years leading up to the war in Ukraine.

Mr Johnson, talking about a phone call between the two leaders ahead of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, said: “He sort of threatened me at one point and said: ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute,’ or something like that.”

But the Kremlin disputed the claim, saying there were “no threats with missiles” during the bilateral conversation held in February 2022.

Fighting has remained largely deadlocked in eastern Ukraine, where Russian shelling killed five civilians over the past day, according to Ukrainian officials.

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 north-east, regional governor Oleh Syniyehubov said.