Ukraine war briefing: North Korea says it will back Russia until it achieves victory

The North Korean foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, said her country will back Russia until it achieves victory in Ukraine during talks in Moscow on Friday with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. She said Pyongyang had no doubt that under Putin’s “wise leadership” Russia will “achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to protect the sovereign rights and security interests”.

Sergei Lavrov said “very close contacts” have been established between Russian and North Korean militaries, and was “deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled position regarding the events that have now unfolded in Ukraine”. Thousands of North Korean troops have recently been sent to Russia, with the US warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called on Ukraine’s allies to stop “watching” and take action to tackle the presence of North Korean troops in Russia before they start confronting his country in combat. In a video posted on Telegram, he said North Korea had made progress in its military capability, missile deployment and weapons production and “now unfortunately they will learn modern warfare”. “The first thousands of soldiers from North Korea are near the Ukrainian border. Ukrainians will be forced to defend themselves against them,” he said. “And the world will watch again.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed permission from its allies to fire long-range missiles into Russia in the face of the North Korean troop deployment. “We see every site where Russia is amassing these North Korean soldiers on its territory – all their camps. We could strike preventively, if we had the ability to strike long enough,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Friday.

China has insisted that growing ties between Pyongyang and Moscow are not its concern. “North Korea and Russia are two independent sovereign states. How they develop bilateral relations is their own matter,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said. Zelenskyy had said he was surprised by the “silence” of China. In response, Lin said “China’s position of hoping various parties will promote an easing of the situation and work for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis has not changed”.

The US announced on Friday that it will provide an additional $425m in military aid to Ukraine. The assistance “will provide Ukraine additional capabilities to meet its most urgent needs, including: air defence interceptors; munitions for rocket systems and artillery; armoured vehicles; and anti-tank weapons”, the defence department said in a statement. The package, which will be drawn from US stocks, also includes air-to-ground munitions, medical equipment, demolition munitions and spare parts.

A Russian missile attack on Kharkiv hit a location used by police on Friday, killing a senior officer and injuring 40 other people, the prosecutor general’s office said. Nine civilians and a rescue worker were among the injured in the late afternoon attack, the office said on Telegram. Police said S-400 missiles had been deployed by Russian forces.

Ukrainian air defences destroyed 31 out of 48 drones launched by Russia over various regions of Ukraine during an overnight strike, Kyiv’s air force said on Friday. Another 14 drones were “locationally lost” and one out of three cruise missiles launched was also destroyed, it said.

Russian investigators said on Friday that a Ukrainian drone attack had killed two people at a convent in the Kursk region of western Russia. The state investigative committee said the attack took place in late October. A Russian military blogger said the victims were two young men who were trying to evacuate people.

Ukraine has increased production of mortar shells from zero before Russia’s invasion to millions per year now, but a global explosives shortage is constraining the push to ramp up the weapons industry, Kyiv’s top arms official said. “The main problem we have now are powders and explosives. However much explosive comes into Ukraine, that’s how many shells we will have,” Herman Smetanin said. Ukraine, he said, was now producing its own artillery shells, including the coveted 155mm calibre used by heavy artillery pieces donated to Ukraine by allied Nato countries. He declined to provide figures.