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Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.
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Russia pounds Ukraine with ‘massive’ attack
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 18 November, 2024, 00:02

Russia on Sunday pummelled Ukraine with a ‘massive’ aerial barrage of missiles and drones, killing at least nine people across the country in the largest attack in months that Kyiv called ‘hellish.’

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow launched 120 missiles and almost 100 drones, targeting Kyiv as well as southern, central and far-western corners of the country.

Civilians were killed in the Mykolaiv, Lviv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions.

‘A hellish night,’ the spokesman for Ukraine’s airforce Yuriy Ignat said on social media, saying Kyiv downed ‘144 targets.’

The strikes caused massive power cuts across the country, with fears of a precarious winter to come.

Officials in Kyiv called it one of the biggest attacks in the almost three-year long Russian invasion.

‘A massive attack on our country,’ Zelensky said.

‘Over the past week, the aggressor used nearly 140 missiles of various types, more than 900 guided aerial bombs, and over 600 strike drones,’ he said, accusing Moscow of trying to ‘intimidate us with cold and blackouts.’

The attack came just two days after German chancellor Olaf Scholz called Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the first time in almost two years.

‘This is war criminal Putin’s true response to all those who called and visited him recently,’ Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said after the attack.

‘We need peace through strength, not appeasement.’

Kyiv had slammed Scholz for calling Putin,as have many in Germany itself.

But on Sunday, Scholz reaffirmed his country’s support for Ukraine, saying that no decision on ending the war would be taken without Kyiv.

‘Ukraine can count on us’ and ‘no decision will be taken behind Ukraine’s back’, the chancellor said at Berlin airport before flying off to a G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

Ukraine has been on the backfoot militarily in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces have made steady advances.

The election of Donald Trump in the US has raised questions about the future of the conflict, with the Republic blazingly critical of US aid to Ukraine.

AFP journalists heard explosions in the early morning in Kyiv and lose to Sloviansk in the Donetsk region.

Moscow, meanwhile, said it had hit all its targets, claiming it had targeted an ‘essential energy infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian military-industrial complex’.

But civilian deaths were reported across Ukraine.

Officials in Kherson said a 51-year-old woman was killed by a drone.

In the southern Mykolaiv region, local leader Vitaliy Kim said ‘two women’ were killed in a night attack and that seven people — including two children — were wounded.

The death toll included two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit, the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor Sergiy Lysak and the operator said. Three more people were wounded in the bombing.

Two people were also killed in the Odesa region, where a teenager was wounded.

Russian drones also made their way to Zakarpattia — a mountainous region rarely hit — with officials saying fragments fell in the village of Pavshyno, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia.

The head of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytsky, said a 66-year-old woman was killed in her car in the village of Sheptytsky — some 20 kilometres from the Polish border.

That prompted NATO-member Poland to scramble fighter jets and mobilise all available forces on Sunday in response.

Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert whenever attacks against its neighbouring country are deemed likely to create a danger for its own territory.

Russia, meanwhile, said a man was killed by a Ukrainian drone in its border Belgorod region.

Ukraine’s energy operator DTEK on Sunday announced emergency power cuts in the Kyiv region and two regions in the east.

Russia’s relentless aerial bombardment has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity, president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Earlier, Ukraine’s energy minister German Galushchenko said on Telegram that Russian forces were ‘attacking electricity generation and transmission facilities throughout Ukraine’.

With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering from major energy shortfalls, while its outmanned and outgunned forces have been steadily ceding ground to the Kremlin’s troops for weeks.

Kyiv has implored its Western allies for help to rebuild its energy grid — a hugely expensive undertaking — and to supply its outgunned forces with more aerial defence weapons.

But many in Ukraine fear that Western help will not be as freely given following the imminent return of Trump to the White House in January.​
 
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Support Ukraine ‘sovereignty’
Biden urges G20 leaders; UK’s Starmer calls for ‘consistent’ ties with China in Xi meeting

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US President Joe Biden yesterday called on G20 leaders at a summit in Rio de Janeiro to support Ukraine's sovereignty, a day after US officials said he had allowed Kyiv to use long-range missiles against Russia.

"The United States strongly supports Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Everyone around this table in my view should as well," Biden said in his opening remarks to the meeting, which Russia's foreign minister is attending.

"I ask everyone here to increase their pressure on Hamas, which is currently refusing this deal," he said.

At the summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hailed the importance of a "strong UK-China relationship" while confronting Chinese President Xi Jinping over several contentious issues as the pair met yesterday.

In the first bilateral meeting between a British prime minister and the Chinese leader since February 2018, Starmer told Xi the UK wanted "consistent, durable, respectful" bilateral relations.

But he also warned that London was "committed to the rule of law", in a nod to various disputes which have soured ties between London and Beijing in recent years.

They include the case of British national Jimmy Lai, a media tycoon and pro-democracy activist imprisoned in Hong Kong, whose case Starmer raised directly with Xi.​
 
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Russia says Ukraine fires first US long-range missiles
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 19 November, 2024, 23:52

Russia said Tuesday that Ukraine had fired US-supplied long-range missiles into its territory for the first time since Washington authorised such strikes as president Vladimir Putin issued a nuclear threat on the 1,000th day of the war.

With neither side showing any sign of relenting, Putin signed a decree broadening the justification for Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons.

The grim anniversary opened with a Russian strike in the eastern Ukrainian region of Sumy that gutted a Soviet-era residential building and killed at least 12 people, including a child.

President Volodymyr Zelensky published images of rescue workers hauling bodies from the debris and called on Kyiv’s allies to ‘force’ the Kremlin into peace.

The foreign ministry released an anniversary statement calling on allies to ramp up military support to bring about a ‘sustainable’ end to the war.

‘Ukraine will never submit to the occupiers, and the Russian military will be punished for violating international law,’ the ministry said.

‘We need peace through strength, not appeasement,’ it added, referring to growing calls for Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table with Russia to end the war.

The Kremlin also vowed to defeat Ukraine.

‘The military operation against Kyiv continues and will be completed,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, using Russia’s preferred language for its invasion.

Washington this week said it had cleared Ukraine to use long-range Army Tactical Missile System weapons against military targets inside Russia — a long-standing Ukrainian request.

Russia’s military said Ukraine used ATACMS missiles against a facility in the Bryansk region close to the border overnight.

‘At 03:25am (0025 GMT), the enemy struck a site in the Bryansk region with six ballistic missiles. According to confirmed data, US-made ATACMS tactical missiles were used,’ said a defence ministry statement.

Moscow has said the use of Western weapons against its internationally recognised territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict and pledged an ‘appropriate and palpable response’.

The strike confirmation came shortly after Putin signed a decree which enables Russia to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states such as Ukraine if they are supported by nuclear powers.

The new nuclear doctrine allows Moscow to unleash a nuclear response in the event of a ‘massive’ air attack, even if it is only with conventional weapons.

Peskov said this was ‘necessary to bring our principles in line with the current situation.’

Russia has stepped up strikes on Ukraine in recent days as its troops advance in the east of the country.

One overnight Russian attack hit a dormitory in the town of Glukhiv, which had a pre-war population around 30,000 people and lies just 10 kilometres from the Kursk region in Russia, where Ukrainian troops captured territory in a major ground offensive in August.

The drone attack killed 12 people including a child, the emergency services said.

In total, Kyiv said Russia had launched 87 drones over Ukraine during the night, and that 51 were shot down.

The strike on Sumy comes just days after another Russian aerial bombardment in the border region killed 12 people and wounded 84. A separate missile strike on Monday on Odesa in southern Ukraine left 10 dead and 55 wounded.

US president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to cut US assistance to Ukraine and bring about a swift end to the war, without detailing how he would do so.

A group of European foreign ministers meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday discussed stepping up aid to Ukraine if Washington’s support wanes.

‘I note with appreciation the readiness of the largest European Union countries to assume the burden of military and financial support for Ukraine in the context of a possible reduction in US involvement,’ Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said after the talks.

Ukrainian forces have steadily lost ground in the Kursk region and have warned that Russia has mass some 50,000 troops, including North Korean forces, to wrest back the region.

The anniversary of Russia’s invasion — launched on February 24, 2022 — comes at a perilous time for Ukrainian forces across the front, particularly near the war-battered cities of Kupiansk and Pokrovsk.

NATO chief Mark Rutte warned Tuesday that Putin must not be allowed to prevail.

‘Why is this so crucial that Putin will not get his way? Because you will have an emboldened Russia on our border and I’m absolutely convinced it will not stop there,’ Rutte told reporters in Brussels.

‘It is then posing a direct threat to all of us in the West,’ he said.

The EU’s outgoing top diplomat Josep Borrell also pressed member states to align with Washington in allowing Kyiv to strike inside Russia using donated long-range missiles.

‘It is fully in accordance with international law,’ he said.​
 
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Russia says US ‘doing everything’ to prolong ‘war’ in Ukraine
Agence France-Presse . Moscow 20 November, 2024, 16:30

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In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin meets with Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, at the Kremlin in Moscow on November 18, 2024. | AFP photo

Kremlin on Wednesday accused the US of prolonging the ‘war in Ukraine’ by stepping up weapons deliveries to Kyiv ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are jockeying to secure an upper hand on the battlefield ahead of Trump assuming office in January 2025.

The Republican has repeatedly criticised US support for Ukraine and claimed he could secure a ceasefire within hours -- comments that have triggered fears in Kyiv and Europe about Ukraine’s ability to withstand the Russian attacks without American support.

Moscow has significantly escalated its aerial campaign this week, launching multiple deadly missile strikes and targeting Ukraine’s energy grid.

Ukraine meanwhile has fired long-range US-supplied ATACMS missiles at Russian territory for the first time since the White House authorised such strikes, drawing scorn and promises of retribution in Moscow.

‘If you look at the trends of the outgoing US administration, they are fully committed to continuing the war in Ukraine and are doing everything they can to do so,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Peskov was responding to the US saying it would soon provide Ukraine with antipersonnel land mines.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News late on Tuesday that Ukraine would lose if Washington, its main military backer, pulled funding.

Washington has sought commitments from Ukraine to use the freshly pledged mines on its own territory and only in areas that are not populated in order to decrease the risk they pose to civilians.

The mines are known as being ‘non-persistent’ because they go inert after a set period of time, when their battery power runs out.

The United Nations has called Ukraine ‘the most mined country in the world,’ almost three years into Russia’s full-scale military offensive and more than a decade after Russian-backed militias in the Donbas region launched a bloody campaign to secede from Kyiv.

The US decision to give Ukraine more mines has drawn some criticism from campaign groups.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) told AFP it ‘condemns this terrible decision by the US’ and said it would be ‘working to get the US to reverse it.’

The Kremlin on Wednesday also rejected as ‘absurd’ and ‘laughable’ suggestions it was involved in the cutting of telecommunications cables running under the Baltic Sea.

Two telecommunications cables cut in the Baltic Sea in 48 hours prompted European officials to say Tuesday that they suspect ‘sabotage’ and ‘hybrid warfare’ linked to Russia’s offensive on Ukraine.

‘It’s quite absurd to keep blaming Russia for everything without any grounds. It is laughable in the context of the lack of any reaction to Ukraine’s sabotage activities in the Baltic Sea,’ Peskov said, accusing Kyiv of blowing up the underwater Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Amid a wave of aerial attacks this week, the US embassy in Kyiv said it would close on Wednesday, warning it had ‘received specific information of a potential significant air attack’ on the Ukrainian capital.

Russia’s forces have also been advancing on the ground.

On Wednesday they claimed to have captured the Ukrainian town of Illinka, close to the strategic hub of Kurakhove in the eastern Donetsk region.

In another sign of escalation, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a decree lowering the threshold for when Russia would use nuclear weapons.

Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, said the new nuclear policy ‘effectively rules out the possibility of beating Russia’s armed forces on the battlefield,’ state media reported Wednesday.

Despite increased rumblings of possible talks to end the conflict, there is no sign of Putin and Zelensky being anywhere close to converging on a possible deal.

Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory in exchange for peace, while Putin has demanded Ukraine’s troops abandon four regions in its south and east as a precondition to peace talks.

Both have said they do not want a temporary ceasefire or freezing of the conflict.​
 
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Ukraine parliament cancels session over threat of Russian attack
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 23 November, 2024, 00:48

Kyiv shuttered parliament on Friday for one day, citing a potential Russian missile attack after president Vladimir Putin issued a warning to the West by launching a new intermediate-range missile at Ukraine.

Moscow’s 33-month invasion of Ukraine escalated this week with Russia’s first launch of a nuclear-capable mid-range ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro on Thursday.

The Kremlin said Friday that a hawkish address by Putin, in which he threatened to strike the West and said he was ‘ready for any scenario,’ had been ‘understood’ in the United States.

Putin had said Moscow reserved the right to strike countries that allow Kyiv to hit Russian territory with their weapons, after the US and the UK gave the green light for Kyiv to do so.

NATO and Ukrainian officials are due to meet Tuesday in Brussels to discuss the escalation, diplomatic sources said.

In Kyiv, which is frequently targeted by Russian drones and missiles, parliament cancelled its usual Friday questions to the government over fears of a strike.

The central area where it is located houses the presidency, the central bank and other government buildings. It has until now been spared of bombings — unlike the rest of the capital — and access is strictly controlled by the army.

Several MPs said they were working remotely and that Friday’s session had been scrapped.

‘There are signals of an increased risk of attacks on the government district in the coming days. Also in Kyiv and Ukraine in general,’ MP Yevgenia Kravchuk said.

The presidency, however, assured its office was working ‘as usual in compliance with standard security measures: if the alarm sounds, we will be in shelters.’

The apparent heightened risk comes two days after the embassies of several countries, including the US, said they were closed, citing the threat of a Russian attack.

In Moscow meanwhile, Russian defence minister Andrei Belousov said Moscow’s advances in the war-battered eastern Ukraine had ‘accelerated’ and also ‘ground down’ Kyiv’s best units.

‘We have, in fact, derailed the entire 2025 campaign,’ defence minister Andrei Belousov said of the Ukrainian army in a video published by the Russian defence ministry.

Russia later said its forces had ‘liberated’ the frontline village of Novodmytrivka, about 10 kilometres north of Kurakhove, an embattled civilian hub in the eastern Donetsk region that the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.

Observers of the conflict say Moscow and Kyiv racing to gain battlefield advantages ahead of January 2025, when Donald Trump — who has vowed to end the war without saying how — is due to take office in the US.

Belousov spoke a day after Putin had addressed Russians, saying the war in Ukraine, which he launched on February 24 2024, had taken on ‘elements of a global character.’

Putin said Russia had hit Dnipro with a new type of ballistic missile called the Oreshnik and that Moscow could launch more such missiles depending on ‘the actions of the United States and its satellites.’

The attack, which apparently targeted an aerospace manufacturing plant in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, sparked immediate condemnation from Kyiv’s allies.

It also shocked residents of Dnipro, which has suffered routine Russian bombardments throughout the invasion.

Vladimir Riga, 66, was on his way to work when he saw ‘an explosion’.

He said the attack damaged a rehabilitation centre and AFP saw workers boarding up the windows of the damaged building after the attack.

Asked if it marked a new turn in the conflict and if he feared an escalation, Riga said, ‘of course I am afraid. Anything can happen.’

The Russian attack also provoked calls for calm from Moscow’s allies, including China.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday described Russia’s deployment of the medium-range missile as a ‘terrible escalation.’

The Russian attack came after Ukraine recently fired US- and UK-supplied missiles at Russian territory for the first time.

Washington said it had granted Kyiv permission to fire long-range weapons at Russian territory as a response to the Kremlin’s deployment of thousands of North Korean troops on Ukraine’s border.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a strong response from world leaders to Russia’s use of the new missile.

Russian strikes meanwhile killed at least two civilians in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy near the border with Russia and one person in the Donetsk region city of Kramatorksk, local authorities said.​
 
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Putin hints at strikes on West in 'global' Ukraine war
AFP
Dnipro, Ukraine
Published: 22 Nov 2024, 20: 26

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Russian president Vladimir Putin AFP file photo

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the conflict in Ukraine had characteristics of a "global" war and did not rule out strikes on Western countries.

The Kremlin strongman spoke out after a day of frayed nerves, with Russia test-firing a new generation intermediate-range missile at Ukraine -- which Putin hinted was capable of unleashing a nuclear payload.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky branded the strike a major ramping up of the "scale and brutality" of the war by a "crazy neighbour", while Kyiv's main backer, the United States, said that Russia was to blame for escalating the conflict "at every turn".

Intermediate-range missiles typically have a reach of up to 5,500 kilometres (3,400 miles) -- enough to make good on Putin's threat of striking the West.

In a defiant address to the nation, Russia's president railed at Ukraine's allies granting permission for Kyiv to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets on Russian territory, warning of retaliation.

In recent days Ukraine has fired US and UK-supplied missiles at Russian territory for the first time, escalating already sky-high tensions in the nearly three-year-long conflict.

"We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities," Putin said.

He said the US-sent Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and British Storm Shadow payloads were shot down by Moscow's air defences, adding: "The goals that the enemy obviously set were not achieved".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov did however say Moscow informed Washington of the missile's launch half an hour before it was fired through an automatic nuclear de-escalation hotline, in remarks cited in state media.

He earlier said Russia was doing everything to avoid an atomic conflict, having updated its nuclear doctrine this week.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Washington saw no need to modify the United States' own nuclear posture in response.

NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said Russia's use of the missile would "neither change the course of the conflict nor deter" the US-led defence alliance from backing Kyiv.

'Reckless behaviour'

Ukraine earlier accused Russia of firing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time in history -- a claim later downplayed by Washington.

The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had launched the missile as part of a barrage towards Dnipro, where local authorities said an infrastructure facility was hit and two civilians were wounded.

Putin said that Russia had carried out "testing in combat conditions of one of the newest Russian... missile systems" named "Oreshnik".

Criticising the global response to the strike -- "final proof that Russia definitely does not want peace" -- Zelensky warned that other countries could become targets for Putin too.

"It is necessary to urge Russia to a true peace, which is possible only through force," the Ukrainian leader said in his evening address.

"Otherwise, there will be relentless Russian strikes, threats and destabilisation, and not only against Ukraine."

The attack on Dnipro comes just days after several foreign embassies shuttered temporarily in the Ukrainian capital, citing the threat of a large-scale strike.

"It is another example of reckless behaviour from Russia," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters.

The spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said the new missile's deployment was "another concerning and worrying development," warning the war was "going in the wrong direction".

Yet a US official played down the threat, saying on condition of anonymity that Russia "likely possesses only a handful of these" experimental missiles.

UK 'directly involved'

The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region where the city of Dnipro is located said the Russian aerial bombardment damaged a rehabilitation centre and several homes, as well as an industrial enterprise.

"Two people were wounded -- a 57-year-old man was treated on the scene and a 42-year-old woman was hospitalised," said the official, Sergiy Lysak.

Russia and Ukraine have escalated their use of long-range missiles in recent days since Washington gave Kyiv permission to use its ATACMS against military targets inside Russia -- a long-standing Ukrainian request.

British media meanwhile reported on Wednesday that Kyiv had launched UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Russia after being given the green light from London.

With ranges of 300 and 250 kilometres respectively, both missile systems' reach is far dwarfed by the experimental intermediate-range system fired by Russia.

Russia's envoy to London on Thursday said that meant Britain was "now directly involved" in the Ukraine war, with Andrei Kelin telling Sky News "this firing cannot happen" without UK and NATO support.

But the White House's Jean-Pierre countered that it was Russia who was behind the rising tensions, pointing to the reported deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to help Moscow fight off a Ukrainian offensive in Russia's border Kursk region.

"The escalation at every turn is coming from Russia," Jean-Pierre said, adding that the United States had warned Moscow against involving "another country in another part of the world" -- referring to Pyongyang.

Kyiv in retreat

The defence ministry in Moscow said Thursday its air-defence systems had downed two Storm Shadows, without saying whether they had come down on Russian territory or in occupied Ukraine.

The missile escalation is coming at a critical moment on the ground for Ukraine, as its defences buckle under Russian pressure across the sprawling front line.

Russia claimed deeper advances in the war-battered Donetsk region, announcing on Thursday that its forces had captured another village close to Kurakhove, closing in on the town after months of steady advances.

Moscow's defence ministry said Russian forces had taken the small village of Dalne, five kilometres (three miles) south of Kurakhove.

Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said that 26 people had been wounded in another strike on the town of Kryvyi Rig, where Zelensky was born​
 
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Ukraine lost over 40pc of the land it held in Kursk region: military

Ukraine has lost over 40 percent of the territory in Russia's Kursk region that it rapidly seized in a surprise incursion in August as Russian forces have mounted waves of counter-assaults, a senior Ukrainian military source said.

The source, who is on Ukraine's General Staff, said Russia had deployed some 59,000 troops to the Kursk region since Kyiv's forces swept in and advanced swiftly, catching Moscow unprepared 2-1/2 years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"At most, we controlled about 1,376 square kilometres, now of course this territory is smaller. The enemy is increasing its counterattacks," the source said.

"Now we control approximately 800 square kilometres."

The Kursk offensive was the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War Two and caught Moscow unprepared.

With the thrust into Kursk, Kyiv aimed to stem Russian attacks in eastern and northeastern Ukraine, force Russia to pull back forces gradually advancing in the east and give Kyiv extra leverage in any future peace negotiations. But Russian forces are still steadily advancing in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

The Ukrainian General Staff source reiterated that about 11,000 North Korean troops had arrived in the Kursk region in support of Russia, but that the bulk of their forces were still finalising their training.​
 
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Ballistic missile strike on Ukraine a warning to West
Says Kremlin; Moscow speeds up its advance in northeast Ukraine
  • Russia claims it 'derailed' Kyiv's war plans​
  • Drone attack on Ukraine's Sumy region kills two​
  • Nato, Ukraine to meet over Russian missile strike​

The Kremlin said yesterday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly-developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed to warn the West that Moscow will respond to moves by the US and Britain to let Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had fired the new missile - the Oreshnik or Hazel Tree - at a Ukrainian military facility.

Putin's confirmation of hypersonic missile use contradicts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's claim that Russia launched an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the United States about the strike, but had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway. Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said.

Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said yesterday that Russian forces had accelerated their advance in the north-east of Ukraine and had ground down the Ukrainian army's best units there.

"This work we have done here now has crushed the best (Ukrainian) units. Now the advance has accelerated. We have derailed their entire 2025 campaign," said Belousov.

A Russian drone attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed two people and injured 12 yesterday morning, regional authorities said.

Twelve apartment buildings, five private residences, a store and three cars were damaged after three drones attacked the city around 5:00 am, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, Nato and Ukraine will hold talks next week in Brussels over Russia's firing of an experimental hypersonic intermediate-range missile, diplomats said yesterday.

Ambassadors from countries in the Nato-Ukraine Council will meet on Tuesday to discuss the strike on the city of Dnipro, officials told AFP.

A spokeswoman for Nato said: "Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter Nato allies from supporting Ukraine."

China yesterday reiterated calls for "calm" and "restraint" by all parties in the Ukraine war after Russia confirmed it fired an experimental "hypersonic" ballistic missile.

"All parties should remain calm and exercise restraint, work to de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultation, and create conditions for an early ceasefire," foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a regular briefing.​
 
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