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North Korean troops in Russia have come under Ukrainian fire, a Kyiv official said on Tuesday. “The first North Korean troops have already been shelled, in the Kursk region,” said Andrii Kovalenko, a member of Ukraine’s security council. The Ukrainian defence minister, Rustem Umerov, also said, in an interview with South Korean television, that he understood the first “small engagement” had occurred with the North Koreans. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said the first battles between the Ukrainian military and North Korean troops “open a new page in instability in the world”.
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A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday killed six people, injured 23 and destroyed a critical infrastructure facility, Ukrainian officials said. Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor, said in a statement that a fire broke out as a result of the strike.
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Foreign ministers from the G7 democracies and three key allies said on Tuesday they were gravely concerned by the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia and the possibility they may be used in the war against Ukraine. “The DPRK’s [North Korea] direct support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, besides showing Russia’s desperate efforts to compensate its losses, would mark a dangerous expansion of the conflict,” the ministers said. Besides G7 members the US, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany, France and Canada, the statement was also signed by South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
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The ministers said they condemned “in the strongest possible terms” increased military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, including Russia’s “unlawful procurement” of North Korean ballistic missiles. They said they were deeply concerned about the potential for transfer of nuclear or ballistic missile-related technology to North Korea, and would work with international partners “for a coordinated response to this new development”.
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An engineer at a factory that makes tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine was jailed for 16 years on Tuesday after being convicted of committing state treason by passing military secrets to Kyiv. Weeks ago his wife received a similar sentence. The court in Sverdlovsk region said Danil Mukhametov, 32, who worked at the Uralvagonzavod tank factory, had partially admitted his guilt after being accused of passing unspecified technical military information to Ukraine’s intelligence services. Meanwhile a Russian court in the western Smolensk region jailed a man for 12 years for sabotage of the railways.
