Three people killed in Russian shelling of Kherson, says governor Three people were killed and six were injured during Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin has said. Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year, but now reportedly regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank. Prokudin said on Telegram that two people were killed and four injured when the central part of the city had been shelled, Reuters reports. In a separate message, the governor said that a hospital in the city was shelled by Russians, and earlier on Monday a car was shot at in a suburb of Kherson, killing one person and injuring a two-month-old baby and his mother. These claims have not yet been independently verified. Closing summary Hungary will block the disbursement of the next tranche of military aid to Ukraine under the European Peace Facility until Kyiv provides “guarantees” that OTP bank or other Hungarian firms will not be blacklisted as “international sponsors of war”, the country’s foreign minister said. Russian shelling on Monday damaged a hospital and homes in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, killing three people and injuring at least 12, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Germany’s aid for Ukraine will be “massively expanded” next year, the country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said. She said: “We will not only continue our support for Ukraine, we will continue to expand and increase it, especially on the part of the Federal Republic of Germany, not only with a view to the winter defence for the coming weeks and months, when it is clear that the Russian president will once again exploit the needs of the people in the cold winter. “Our support will also be massively expanded, especially for the coming year.” At least three Russian officers were killed in the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol in a blast Ukraine’s intelligence said was an “act of revenge” by local resistance groups. Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, has said he had a “productive call” with his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, in which they discussed Ukraine’s needs for winter, including air defence systems, artillery and more ammunition. The UK’s transport secretary, Mark Harper, who previously worked under the former Conservative prime minister David Cameron, was among those who praised his appointment as the new foreign secretary. “Given the challenges facing us with the war in Ukraine (and) what’s going on in the Middle East, having a really experienced person coming in as foreign secretary, I think, is an excellent move,” Harper said. EU officials are finalising the “last details” of a proposed 12th package of sanctions on Russia that will include a diamond ban, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said. Borrell said the European Commission, the EU executive, could approve the proposed package on Wednesday. It would then go to the Council of the EU, comprising the bloc’s 27 member countries, for discussion and approval. Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has already applied 11 packages of sanctions against Moscow to diminish the Kremlin’s ability to finance the war. The measures span across sectors and include about 1,800 individuals and entities. According to Reuters, Borrell told reporters after a meeting of EU foreign ministers: This twelfth package will include … new export bans, among them … diamonds, actions to tighten the oil price cap, in order to decrease the revenue that Russia is getting from selling its oil – not to us but to others – (and) fighting against circumvention. The US is working hard to try to get a strong consensus leaders’ statement at this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) summit this week, the senior US official for APEC, Matt Murray, has told reporters. Leaders from the 21-member APEC forum are due to gather in San Francisco from Wednesday until Friday. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have divided opinion among APEC members, making drafting a summit declaration difficult, Reuters reports. “We’re certainly working toward having a strong consensus statement in APEC for the leaders to be able to release at the end of the week,” Murray said in a briefing call. He acknowledged there had been “a lot of friction over the last couple of years over statements, primarily due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.” Murray continued: But last year Thailand hosted APEC and was able to announce a consensus leaders’ declaration, and we certainly want to try to do the same thing this year. And we’re working very hard with all of our like-minded partners and economies, economic partners throughout APEC, to try to deliver that kind of result. Polish trucking representatives have said the latest talks with Ukrainian officials had failed to end a dispute over what they call unfair competition from the neighbouring country’s businesses, AFP reports. The hauliers say the easing of EU access rules in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to an influx of Ukrainian competition, taking a serious toll on their earnings. In response, Polish truckers began blockades last week of three major border crossings. On Monday, some of the protesting truckers met with representatives of the Ukrainian and Polish governments. “We have not reached an agreement. The Ukrainian side does not take our demands into account,” said Rafal Mekler, a leader of a protest in the border town of Dorohusk. Polish transportation companies want to reinstate the use of EU entry permits for Ukrainian trucks, a system waived by the bloc following Russia’s invasion. Russia has jailed an ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny while she is being tried for alleged “extremism”, her associates have said, AFP reports. Ksenia Fadeyeva, who led Navalny’s now-banned Anti-Corruption Foundation group in the Siberian city of Tomsk, faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted. Fadeyeva had been under house arrest; she was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists” in January 2022 and went on trial in August. Moscow has used laws on so-called “terrorist” and “extremist” bodies to hand out years-long jail sentences to critics, including Navalny and his top allies. “Ksenia Fadeyeva was sent to jail,” Navalny’s team wrote on social media. Navalny’s team said Fadeyeva had led investigations into corruption in the region, shone a light on societal problems and “engaged in legal political activities”. “Ksenia should be free,” it said in a post on social media. The number of people injured by Russian shelling in Kherson is at least 12, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said (see earlier post at 14.23 for other details). Two people were killed and 10 more injured in an afternoon combined attack in the central part of the city, Prokudin said, Reuters reports. “Eight vehicles, including one ambulance, an administrative building, a hospital, and at least 15 houses were destroyed or damaged,” he added. These claims could not be independently verified. Posting to X, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has just congratulated David Cameron on being appointed the UK’s new foreign secretary, replacing James Cleverly, whom Kuleba said he appreciated for his “tireless efforts to mobilise worldwide support for Ukraine”. Save Ukraine, an organisation which focuses on rescuing Ukraine’s most vulnerable people, has said its rescuers have evacuated over 108,880 people from the frontlines since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It said its rescue network provided humanitarian assistance to over 186,450 people, with its hotline operators fielding over 161,425 calls from Ukrainians in urgent need of assistance. “Additionally, we have returned 204 children who were deported to Russia or remained in peril in the temporarily occupied territories,” Save Ukraine posted to X.