Ukraine war briefing: Russia says military ties with North Korea actively expanding

Russia’s defence minister met with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, on Friday and agreed to boost military cooperation between the two countries, state media said. Andrei Belousov’s visit to North Korea “would greatly contribute to bolstering up the defence capabilities of the two countries and … promoting the friendly, mutual cooperation and development of the relations between the two armies”, the news agency KCNA said. Belousov said Moscow-Pyongyang ties were “actively expanding in all areas, including military cooperation”, Russian news agencies reported, while Kim was quoted as saying his country would “invariably support” Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The visit came amid escalating tensions over the deployment of Pyongyang’s troops in western Russia to help in the war against Ukraine. According to KCNA, Kim described the decision of western powers to allow Kyiv to strike targets in Russia with its missiles as a “direct military intervention in the conflict” and said Russia had the right to take “resolute action” in self-defence.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, has urged his Nato counterparts to issue an invitation to Kyiv at a meeting in Brussels next week to join the western military alliance, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, suggested that Ukrainian territory under his control should be taken under the “Nato umbrella” to try to stop the “hot stage” of the war with Russia. He told Sky News that such a proposal had “never been considered” by Kyiv because it had never “officially” been offered. “That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he said.

Abandoning Ukraine would jeopardise British, European and US security and lead to “infinitely higher” costs in the long term, the head of MI6 has warned in a speech that amounted to a plea to US president-elect Donald Trump to continue supporting Kyiv. Richard Moore, giving a rare speech, said he believed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “would not stop” at Ukraine if he was allowed to subjugate it in any peace talks involving the incoming US Republican administration.

Moore accused Russia of waging a “staggeringly reckless campaign” of sabotage in Europe while also stepping up its nuclear sabre-rattling to scare other countries off from backing Ukraine. “Our security – British, French, European and transatlantic – will be jeopardised,” he said during an address in Paris alongside his French counterpart.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi as the new commander of Ukraine’s land forces. “The Ukrainian army needs internal changes to achieve our state’s goals in full,” the Ukrainian president said on Telegram on Friday.

Russia launched more than 100 drones at Ukraine overnight on Thursday and early on Friday, killing one person and injuring eight others, officials said. A drone attack killed a woman in the southern city of Kherson, said the head of the local military administration, Roman Mrochko. A drone attack on the southern region of Odesa damaged 13 residential buildings and injured seven people, the national police said. Fragments from downed Russian drones struck buildings in two Kyiv districts and injured one person, officials said.

Ukrainian emergency services showed pictures on Telegram of rubble strewn about at a pediatric clinic in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district. A security guard at the facility was taken to hospital and adjacent buildings suffered damage. Drone fragments had struck an infrastructure site in the Sviatoshynskyi district, said the mayor, Vitali Klitschko.

At least two Ukrainian regions suffered power cuts on Friday, electricity operator Ukrenergo said. Local media reported 70% of customers in Mykolaiv and the surrounding region had been without electricity for a second day as a result of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.

Moscow said on Friday its forces had seized the village of Rozdolne in the southern part of Ukraine’s Donbas region, where it has made a string of territorial gains in recent months.

Russia downed 47 attack drones fired by Ukraine overnight to Friday, mainly targeting the Rostov border region, where a major fire broke out at an industrial site, authorities said. Ukraine’s military said it struck the region’s Atlas oil depot, causing a fire. Ukraine also struck a radar station for a Russian Buk air defence system in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the military said.

The French president has vowed to give Ukraine intensive support in its battle against Russia’s “escalation” of its invasion, his office said. Emmanuel Macron condemned Russia’s “indiscriminate” strikes against Ukraine’s cities and power infrastructure in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, the Élysée Palace said. France has said that Ukraine’s use of French missiles remains “an option”.

Russian authorities returned more than 500 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat, with most having died in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine said on Friday. Russia, for its part, does not announce the return of its bodies.

Russia has sentenced Alexei Gorinov, the first person to be convicted for speaking out against Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine, to another three years in prison in a second trial. The 63-year-old is already serving a seven-year sentence after a conviction in 2022. He wore a paper badge with a peace sign drawn on it as a court in Vladimir, east of Moscow, handed him the new sentence on charges of “justifying terrorism” on Friday, the Medizazona website reported.