Ukraine Russia war latest news: Russian company offers thousands to destroy UK and US tanks

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.”

The decision by the Biden administration to reverse its previous stance and send tanks to Ukraine is a significant political and military move, Kim Sengupta writes.

The supply of the M1A1 Abrams has met the German stipulation on Leopard 2 tanks, for Berlin’s own forces – and those of other Nato states using them – to transfer them to Kyiv, with new offensives by both Russia and Ukraine due to begin in the spring.

The Abrams, the Leopards and the British-supplied Challengers will not, by themselves, win the war for Ukraine; but they will have a major impact on the battlefield and raise the scale and lethality of combat.

The number of tanks for a decisive tilt against the Russians are not adding up at the moment: although that may change.

Russia‘s deputy foreign minister said that “small steps” would be needed for Moscow and the United States to come closer to agreement on bilateral issues, the RIA news agency reported on Monday.

“We hope that the tactics of small steps will allow us to come to mutually acceptable solutions on the most important issues of the bilateral agenda,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the RIA news agency in an interview.

Slovenia’s state security service has arrested two men suspected of spying for Russian military intelligence, 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 Bezigrad neighbourhood of the capital Ljubljana, the report said.

It said the two suspects have been charged with espionage for Russia‘s GRU military intelligence service and using false documents. If convicted, they could be jailed for up to eight years.

The Slovenian Intelligence Agency said the information gathered was “classified and therefore the agency does not make it public nor does it publicly comment on it.

“The Agency regularly informs the main bodies of the national security system on intelligence activities carried out by foreign entities and cooperates … closely with Slovenian security authorities as well as with the EU and NATO authorities and services,” it said in an emailed response to Reuters.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday called for South Korea to provide direct military support to Ukraine, saying Kyiv is in urgent need of weapons to fight off the prolonged Russian invasion.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with the large US-backed military, has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine while joining US-led economic sanctions against Moscow.

But the country has not directly provided arms to Ukraine, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Speaking at a forum in Seoul, Stoltenberg urged South Korea to “step up on the specific issue of military support.”

He noted that several NATO members and allies, including Germany, Norway and Sweden, have changed their policies of not exporting weapons to countries in conflict to support Ukraine.

“If we believe in freedom, if we believe in democracy, if we don’t want autocracy and tyranny to win, then they need weapons. That’s the reality,” said Stoltenberg, who arrived in South Korea on Sunday on a trip that also includes Japan.

Stoltenberg also met South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday. They discussed South Korea’s commitment to support Ukraine and NATO’s possible role in dissuading North Korea from its growing nuclear ambitions following an unprecedented number of ballistic missile tests in 2022, Yoon’s office said.

South Korean officials didn’t confirm any specific discussions about sending arms to Ukraine.

Following his meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin on Sunday, Stoltenberg mentioned U.S. intelligence reports accusing North Korea of providing weapons to Russia to support its war in Ukraine, which he said highlights how security between the regions “is more and more interconnected.”

A Russian company said it will offer five million roubles – approximately £58,000 – in cash to the first soldiers who destroy or capture western-made tanks in Ukraine, after the Kremlin vowed Russian forces would wipe out any Western tanks shipped to Ukraine.

The United States, Germany and several other European countries are lining up to send Kyiv dozens of advanced combat tanks over the next few months to help boost Ukraine‘s military capacity as the war approaches the 12-month mark.

The decision has been criticised by the Kremlin as a dangerous escalation, and spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the tanks would “burn” on the frontlines.

Now a Russian company – Fores, a Urals-based firm which makes proppants for the energy industry – is offering cash payments to Russian servicemen who “capture or destroy” German-made Leopard 2 or U.S.-made Abrams tanks.

The company said it will pay five million roubles to the first Russian soldier to destroy one of the tanks, and 500,000 roubles- approximately £5,700- for all subsequent attacks.

Echoing language used by Russian officials and pro-war state TV hosts, Fores said NATO was pumping Ukraine with an “unlimited” amount of arms and escalating the conflict. It also said it would pay a 15-million rouble ($215,000) bounty on Western-made fighter jets, should they ever be delivered to Ukraine.

The tanks have not yet been dispatched to Kyiv, and it could take several months before the bulk of the promised deliveries are sent.

Finland is sticking to its plan to join NATO at the same time as Nordic neighbour Sweden, and hopes to do so no later than July, Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto said on Monday.

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey raised objections.

The three countries signed an agreement in Madrid over a way forward, but last week, Turkey suspended talks after protests in Stockholm that included the burning of a Koran.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan signalled on Sunday that Ankara could agree to Finland joining NATO ahead of Sweden and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday made similar statements.

However, Haavisto said Finland will stick with Sweden, its closest military partner, during the application process.

“Our strong wish is still to join NATO together with Sweden,” Haavisto told a news conference in Helsinki.

“We have underlined to all our future NATO partners, including Hungary and Turkey, that Finnish and Swedish security go together,” he said.

A spokesperson for Sweden’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky met Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Monday during a rare visit by a foreign leader to a region close to the war front.

Zelensky greeted Frederiksen with a handshake on a snowy street before entering a hospital where they met soldiers wounded in Russia‘s invasion.

“It is important for our warriors to be able to undergo not only physical, but also psychological rehabilitation,” Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “I am grateful to all the medical workers who care about the health of our defenders. I wish them a speedy recovery!”

The two leaders also visited the Mykolaiv Commercial Sea Port, where they saw oil storage tanks hit by Russian enemy missiles and drones, and a heating point equipped with a water purification and distribution unit under a project implemented with Danish assistance.

Zelensky thanked Frederiksen for the assistance provided by Denmark, whose defence ministry said earlier this month that the country would donate 19 French-made Caesar howitzer artillery systems to Ukraine.

The president said he had also met local officials while in Mykolaiv region, which has frequently been under attack by Russian forces since the invasion 11 months ago.

“The region is heroically withstanding all the attacks of the terrorists (Russian forces). During the visit, I held a meeting on the current situation in the region,” he wrote.

“We discussed the operational situation in the south of Ukraine, the consequences of Russia‘s missile and drone attacks.”

Talks also covered the state of the region’s energy infrastructure and the region’s long-term recovery, Zelensky said.

Russian forces claimed incremental gains in eastern Ukraine on Monday adding up to their biggest advances in months, after relentless battles that Kyiv described as human wave attacks which showed Moscow had no regard for the lives of its own men.

The administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, claimed troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.

A day earlier, the head of Russia‘s Wagner mercenary force said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut, a city that has been the focus of sustained Russian attacks for months.

Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar, and Reuters could not independently verify the situations there. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains after around two months in which front lines had largely been frozen in place.

“The situation is very tough. Bakhmut, Vuhledar and other sectors in Donetsk region – there are constant Russian attacks,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address late on Sunday.

“The enemy does not count its people and, despite numerous casualties, maintains a high intensity of attacks.”

Vuhledar sits south of Bakhmut, near where the eastern frontline protects Russian-controlled rail lines supplying Moscow’s forces in southern Ukraine. Mykola Salamakha, a Ukrainian colonel and military analyst, told Ukrainian Radio NV that Moscow’s assault there was coming at huge cost.

“The town is on an upland and an extremely strong defensive hub has been created there,” he said. “This is a repetition of the situation in Bakhmut – one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has now been raging for more than 11 months, the conflict continuing to record devastating casualties and force the mass displacement of millions of blameless Ukrainians.

Vladimir Putin began the war by claiming Russia’s western neighbour needed to be “demilitarised and de-Nazified”, an entirely baseless pretext on which to launch a landgrab against an independent state that happens to have a Jewish president.

Ukraine has fought back courageously ever since and continued to defy the odds by defending itself against Russian onslaughts with the help of Western military aid.

Read more from Thomas Kingsley and Joe Sommerlad: