Putin heads to China days after Xi and Trump meeting

 Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on a two-day trip to Beijing, just days after Trump visited.

The two leaders are set to discuss the proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, a Kremlin aide said, which could one day deliver an additional 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia's Arctic gas fields via Mongolia to China.

The meeting comes after Russia attacked a Chinese ship headed for a Ukrainian port, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The Russian drone struck the KSL DEYANG vessel flying under Marshall Islands flag off the coast of Ukraine early on Monday, a source earlier told Reuters news agency.

The vessel was did not contain cargo and was bound for Ukraine's Pivdennyi port in the Odesa region where it was to load iron ore concentrate. Although a fire was sparked, the vessel was not seriously damaged and no one was injured.

“The Russians could not have been unaware of what vessel was at sea,” Mr Zelensky said.

Xi and Putin exchanged “congratulatory letters” on Sunday ahead of the latter’s visit to Beijing, just four days after Donald Trump left China after a high-stakes summit.

Moscow says Ukraine peace process can resume

02:01 , Alex Croft

Moscow expects the Russia-Ukraine peace process to be resumed but it is currently paused, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting on remarks by Donald Trump that deadly Russian strikes on Ukraine could set back peace efforts.

Trump suggested to reporters on Friday that a Russian missile strike on a Kyiv apartment building that killed 24 people, including three children, had delayed efforts to reach peace in the four-year conflict.

Peskov said attention should be paid to ongoing strikes by Ukraine on civilian targets in Russia. Moscow faced its biggest drone attack in over a year at the weekend, with at least three people killed in the wider region around the capital.

Kyiv couple killed in a fierce Russian airstrike hoped to start a family, mourners say

01:02 , Alex Croft

Like many Ukrainians, Maryna Homeniuk fled her homeland after Russia's full-scale invasion four years ago. She managed to complete her degree in the Czech Republic, adding Vietnamese to her impressive list of languages, before returning home the following year and meeting her beloved, Yurii Orlov.

Homeniuk and Orlov, who captained the Kyiv Floorball Club after playing hockey for teams in the Ukrainian capital, were among the 24 people killed Thursday during a terrifying wave of Russian airstrikes that Ukrainian military officials described as the biggest barrage of the war. A cruise missile flattened their apartment building.

On Saturday, friends and family paid their final respects to Homeniuk, a 24-year-old English teacher. They had hoped to pay tribute to Orlov, too, but his body wasn't ready for burial yet.

“She was a very caring person. I feel very sorry, because she had so many dreams. She worked with children and wanted to have children herself someday, when times were safer,” her friend Olesia Yukhnovych said.