MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) blocked an attempt by Ukraine to organize the hijacking of a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber and fly it to Ukraine, the FSB said on Monday.
“Ukrainian intelligence intended to recruit a Russian military pilot for a monetary reward and the provision of Italian citizenship, to persuade him to fly and land a missile carrier in Ukraine,” the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said on its website.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) has not immediately responded to Reuters’ request for a comment.
During the operation, Russia received information that helped its forces to strike the Ozerne airfield in northwestern Ukraine, the FSB added in its statement.
The timings of the operation and the alleged strikes on the Ozerne airfield in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr were both unclear.
The Zhytomyr region was under air raid alerts in the early hours on Monday. Unofficial reports on social media, including on the Telegram messaging app which is heavily used by officials and military in both countries for disseminating information, said there were explosions in Zhytomyr.
Russia launched missiles at a children’s hospital in Kyiv, in a barrage that killed at least 20 people in a number of cities.
Explosions rang out and black smoke could be seen rising from the centre of Kyiv, according to reports.
Pictures distributed by officials from the children’s medical facility in Kyiv showed people digging through mounds of rubble, black smoke billowing over a gutted building and medical staff wearing blood-stained scrubs.
The rare daytime Russian barrage came as Volodymyr Zelensky was due in Warsaw before he flies to the NATO summit in Washington. 
Zelensky said that there were an unknown number of people trapped under the rubble of the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital and it was not immediately clear how many had been killed.