Ukraine war briefing: US expects thousands of North Korean troops to enter Ukraine combat soon

The US expects thousands of North Korean troops massing in Russia will “soon” enter combat against Ukraine, the secretary of defence said on Saturday. About 10,000 North Korean soldiers were believed to be based in the Russian border region of Kursk, Lloyd Austin said, where they were being “integrated into the Russian formations”. “Based upon what they’ve been trained on, the way they’ve been integrated into the Russian formations, I fully expect to see them engaged in combat soon,” the Pentagon chief said. He had “not seen significant reporting” of North Korean troops being “actively engaged in combat” to date, he said.

Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia would carry out more tests of its new Oreshnik missile in combat and had a stock ready for use, a day after firing the experimental, nuclear-capable ballistic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The Russian president described the missile’s first use as a successful test and said more would follow. The Kremlin said the strike on a Ukrainian military facility was designed to warn the west that Moscow would respond to moves by the US and the UK to allow Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged world leaders to “respond firmly and decisively” after the Russian missile strike on Thursday. The Ukrainian president said his country was working on developing new types of air defence to counter “new risks” following Russia’s deployment of a new ballistic missile.

Ukraine’s parliament cancelled Friday’s session, legislators said, citing the risk of a Russian missile attack on the district of Kyiv where government buildings are located. “The hour of questions to the government has been cancelled,” said Yevgenia Kravchuk, an MP from the ruling party. “There are signals of an increased risk of attacks on the government district in the coming days.”

Russia sent air defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of troops from the North to support its war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea said. Experts believe North Korea’s dispatch of troops to fight against Ukraine and weapons from its vast stockpiles have been repaid with Russian oil and advanced military technology, Justin McCurry and Emma Graham-Harrison report.

Moscow’s forces captured the settlement of Novodmytrivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Friday – the latest gain in what the defence minister, Andrei Belousov, described as an accelerated advance. Ukraine’s military made no mention of the village, north of the key town of Kurakhove. But in a late night report, the general staff noted it was among eight villages where Russian forces were engaged in fighting and trying to advance. It said the Kurakhove sector of the 1,000km (600-mile) front was gripped by heavy fighting, with 10 of 35 armed clashes in the sector still raging. The battlefield accounts of neither side could not be verified.

Russia said Ukraine had returned 46 Russian citizens who were taken there after Ukrainian forces seized a chunk of Russia’s Kursk region in August. “The painstaking and lengthy negotiations for the return of our fellow countrymen to their homeland have brought results,” Kursk’s regional governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Telegram on Friday. “They are receiving all necessary assistance.” There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Ukrainian air defences destroyed 64 out of 114 drones launched by Russia during its latest mass airstrike, Kyiv’s military said on Friday. It added that another 41 drones had been “locationally lost”, most likely as a result of Ukrainian signal jamming.

Ukraine accused Russian forces of executing five Ukrainian prisoners of war during a single incident in eastern Ukraine last month. The prosecutor general’s office claimed Russian troops shot and killed the five unarmed Ukrainian soldiers after capturing them during an assault on their position on 2 October on the outskirts of Vuhledar town in the country’s east.

Russia has included the territories it occupies in Ukraine in its recent greenhouse gas inventory report to the UN, drawing protests from Ukrainian officials and activists at the Cop29 climate summit. “Russia is using international platforms to legalise their actions, to legalise their occupation of our territory,” Ukraine’s deputy environment minister, Olga Yukhymchuk, told Reuters. She said Kyiv was in touch with officials from the the UN’s main climate body to ask it to resolve the dispute.

The UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said Britain would continue to see “aggressive language” from Vladimir Putin after he threatened to strike the UK. Cooper told Sky News there had been an “aggressive, blustering tone” from the Russian president throughout the conflict and is was “completely unacceptable”. Meanwhile, the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, vowed to continue to “do everything that is necessary” to help Ukraine combat Russia.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said supporting Ukraine’s self-defence was the “best protection” for peace in Europe. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who held an hour-long call with Putin last week, has resisted calls to support Ukraine’s longer-range strike capabilities against Russia, after the UK and the US approved Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow missiles and similar American Atacms weapons inside Russia.

A British man has pleaded guilty to an arson attack on a Ukraine-linked business and accepting pay from a foreign intelligence agency. Jake Reeves, 23, admitted aggravated arson in relation to a fire in March at an east London warehouse belonging to a man only referred to in court as Mr X. He pleaded guilty to an offence under the National Security Act 2023 of obtaining a material benefit from a foreign intelligence service.