Ukraine-Russia latest: North Korea soldiers in Russia targeted by Ukrainian fire for first time, Kyiv says

US says North Korea has deployed 10,000 troops in Russia, with more than half of them in the Kursk region

Video from Ukraine claims to show North Korean soldiers lining up to collect Russia military gear

North Korean troops have been hit by Ukraine’s army for the first time since they entered the war on Russia’s side, Kyiv has said.

Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s national security council, reported that the incident took place in Russia’s western Kursk region. Ukrainian forces have held parts of this area since their unexpected cross-border operation in August.

“The initial North Korean troops have already encountered fire in the Kursk region,” Kovalenko said, though he did not provide additional details.

His remarks are likely to heighten concerns that North Korea’s involvement could draw other nations into the conflict, which has already become Europe’s largest war since 1945.

Pyongyang has vowed to back Russia until it achieves victory over Ukraine. “Our traditional, historically friendly relations, which have traveled the tested path of history, today ... are rising to a new level of relations of invincible military comradeship,” the North’s foreign minister Choe Son Hui said during her trip to Moscow last week.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken confirmed there are 10,000 North Koreans already in Russia, including as many as 8,000 in the Kursk region.

Key Points

• Russia destroys Kharkiv supermarket
• Russian forces capture third village in two days, its defence ministry claims
• Moldova holds presidential runoff election amid claims of Russian meddling
• North Korea says it will back Russia until it ‘achieves a great victory’ in Ukraine

[3 November 2024 07:00 · Shweta Sharma]

Moldova holds presidential runoff election amid claims of Russian meddling

Moldovans vote on Sunday in a presidential runoff that has been overshadowed by election meddling allegations and could see Moscow gain more influence in a diplomatic battleground between Russia and the European Union.

Pro-Western incumbent Maia Sandu, who has accelerated the southeast European nation’s push to leave Moscow’s orbit and join the EU, faces Alexandr Stoianoglo, an ex-prosecutor general backed by the pro-Russian Socialist Party.

Moldova's president Maia Sandu prepares to cast her vote, in Chisinau, Moldova (AP)

The fortunes of Ms Sandu, who set Moldova on the long path of EU accession talks in June, will be closely followed in Brussels a week after Georgia, another ex-Soviet state hoping to join, re-elected a ruling party seen as increasingly pro-Russian.

Mr Stoianoglo says that as president he too would back EU integration but also develop ties with Russia in the national interest. He has vowed to try to revive cheap Russian gas supplies and said he would meet with president Vladimir Putin if Moldovans wanted it.

The outcome of the vote is likely to set the tone for next summer’s parliamentary elections where Sandu’s ruling party is expected to struggle to retain its majority and which will determine the stripe of the future government.

[3 November 2024 07:00 · Alex Croft]

In pictures: Kyiv reels from drone strike

Firefighters work at a site of a Kyiv apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike (REUTERS)

A resident clings onto a cat wrapped up in a bundle following the Kyiv strikes (REUTERS)

Smoke rises following Russian drone strike (REUTERS)

[3 November 2024 06:00 · Shweta Sharma]

Former North Korean soldiers on why troops will volunteer to fight in Ukraine

The thousands of young soldiers North Korea has sent to Russia, reportedly to help fight against Ukraine, are mostly elite special forces, but that hasn’t stopped speculation they’ll be slaughtered because they have no combat experience, no familiarity with the terrain and will likely be dropped onto the most ferocious battlefields.

That may be true, and soon. Observers say the troops are already arriving at the front. From the North Korean perspective, however, these soldiers might not be as miserable as outsiders think.

They may, in fact, view their Russian tour with pride and as a rare chance to make good money, see a foreign country for the first time, and win preferred treatment for their families back home, according to former North Korean soldiers.

Read the full report here.

[3 November 2024 05:32 · Shweta Sharma]

US citizen who allegedly spied for Russia from Ukraine appears in Moscow

A US citizen who was spirited out of eastern Ukraine by Russian special forces after helping the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops said in Moscow on Saturday he had asked for Russian citizenship.

“My name is Daniel Martindale,” he told a press conference, state media reported.

“Here is my passport. It went through the war with me, you can see in what condition it is,” he said in English, holding up what appeared to be a well-used US passport and birth certificate.

He said he was under no duress, wanted to receive Russian citizenship and predicted Russia would win the war in Ukraine.

The US embassy in Moscow did not immediately comment.

Mr Martindale, who said he had worked as a missionary, said he entered Ukraine from Poland in early 2022, just days before president Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine.

“I’ve wanted to go to Russia for a long time, I realized that this is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” he was quoted as saying.

An unidentified Russian intelligence source quoted by the RIA state news agency said Mr Martindale had supplied information to Russian forces about the location of key Ukrainian infrastructure for two years.

[3 November 2024 05:00 · Shweta Sharma]

North Korean troops armed with infantry weapons, intelligence report says

Russia has armed North Korean troops deployed on the frontlines with infantry weapons, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) said.

Soldiers have been armed with 60-mm mortars, AK-12 rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, Feniks anti-tank guided missiles, and hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers, it said.

(EPA)

The troops have also reportedly received night vision devices, thermal imagers, collimator sights, and binoculars.

The agency reported that Russia has deployed over 7,000 North Korean troops from Primorsky Krai to the Ukrainian border.

This number closely matches Washington’s recent announcement. US secretary of state Antony Blinken stated earlier this week that around 8,000 North Korean troops are stationed in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, where Ukraine initiated a cross-border incursion in August and continues to hold substantial territory.

According to HUR, North Korea has sent nearly 12,000 troops to Russia, including 500 officers and three generals. The soldiers are reportedly undergoing training at five military camps in Russia’s Far East.

[3 November 2024 04:29 · Tara Cobham]

Russia targets Kyiv in hours-long drone attack

Russia unleashed an overnight drone attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv that lasted into late morning and wounded at least one person, city officials said on Saturday.

Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko.

Mayor Vitalii Klitschko had earlier reported that two people had been injured.

“Another night. Another air-raid alert. Another drone attack. The armed forces of the Russian Federation attacked Kyiv again according to their old and familiar tactics,” Popko wrote on social media.

He said all the drones aimed at Kyiv had been shot down, but warned that others currently located in airspace outside the city could turn toward the capital.

Reuters correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air-raid alert that lasted more than five hours.

Russia has carried out regular airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities behind the front lines of the war which began when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022.

Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.

Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.

[3 November 2024 04:00 · Shweta Sharma]

Russia, Ukraine trade accusation of sabotaging prisoners of war swap

Kyiv called on Moscow on Sunday to provide a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war ready for a swap after Russia accused Ukraine of sabotaging the exchange process.

In requesting the list of Ukrainians from his Russian counterpart, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on his Telegram messaging channel: “We are always ready to exchange prisoners of war!”

Kyiv and Moscow have frequently exchanged prisoners since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022. The last swap took place in mid-October with each side bringing home 95 prisoners.

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine was essentially sabotaging the process and has refused to take back its own citizens.

Ms Zakharova said Russia’s defence ministry had offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war but that Ukraine had taken only 279.

Mr Lubinets, in turn, said that Ukraine was always ready to accept its citizens and accused Russia of slowing down the exchange process.

Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova said on Saturday that Ukraine has “politicised” the issue.

“We consider it necessary to return to a constructive dialogue and speed up the exchange of prisoners,” Ms Moskalkova wrote on Telegram.

[3 November 2024 03:30 · Shweta Sharma]

Ukraine 'holding back' powerful Russian offensive, Kyiv top commander says

Ukrainian forces are restraining Russia’s one of most powerful offensives since the start of full-scale invasion as analysts say war has entered the “most dangerous” phase.

Russian troops advanced in September at their fastest rate since March 2022, the month after president Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, according to open-source data. Ukraine in August took part of Russia’s Kursk region.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion,” general Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv early in the war and win a decisive victory, Mr Putin scaled back his war ambitions to take the Donbas industrial heartland in Ukraine‘s east, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

(Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)

Donbas has since become the war’s main theatre, where some of the biggest battles in Europe for generations have taken place and where thousands of troops on each side have died.

On Saturday, Moscow said it had taken two more settlements along the Donbas frontline.

In the week of 20-27 October alone, Russia captured nearly 200 square km (80 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, according to the Russian media group Agentstvo, which analysed Ukrainian open-source maps.

The war is entering what Russian analysts say is its most dangerous phase as Moscow’s forces advance, North Korea sends troops to Russia and the West ponders how the conflict will end.

[3 November 2024 03:00 · Alex Croft]

Uncertainty in Kyiv over possible Trump re-election

A senior European diplomat based in Kyiv has told Reuters that Ukrainian officials are less worried about Donald Trump potentially re-entering the White House than some might expect, in part because Ukraine was losing territory even with the military and economic support it receives.

“At least Trump might shake things up a bit,” the diplomat said.

But the uncertainty over what Trump would do to try to end the war is causing considerable unease, with Kyiv-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko saying: “The main problem is that Trump promises to initiate negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine immediately after his victory, but we do not know on what terms.”

[3 November 2024 01:31 · Shweta Sharma]

Senior officer killed and 40 injured in Kharkiv missile strike

A senior police officer was killed and at least 40 others were injured after a Russian missile strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second largest city, the prosecutor general’s office said.

At least 30 police officers, nine civilians and a rescue worker were among the injured in the targeted strike at a police station in the late afternoon attack, the office said on the Telegram messaging app.

Police said S-400 missiles had been deployed by Russian forces and showed pictures of rescue workers sifting through mounds of rubble with the help of floodlights.

Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, said some injured officers were in serious condition. He said an attack on the city earlier in the day had damaged a multi-storey apartment bloc and several private houses.

A Russian guided bomb struck a multi-storey residence on Wednesday in Kharkiv, killing three people.

Syniehubov also said a Russian guided bomb had struck a five-storey apartment building in the city of Kupiansk, further east, injuring two people.

Further west, in the city of Sumy, prosecutors said a drone attack on a multi-storey apartment building injured five.

Kharkiv remained in Ukrainian hands throughout the initial unsuccessful advance by Russian forces on the capital, Kyiv, after their February 2022 invasion. The city has since remained a frequent target of Russian air strikes.

(EPA)