Ukraine-Russia war latest: North Korea sees ‘hundreds’ of casualties in Kursk

Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region and increased pressure in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s top army commander said in an evening update yesterday.

“For the third day the enemy is conducting intensive assaults in the Kursk region,” Oleksandr Syrskyi told government and regional officials in an online speech. He added that Russia was “actively” using North Korean troops who were taking significant losses.

Mr Syrskyi said fighting was also escalating in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian forces were advancing at their fastest pace this year.

He told government and regional officials that Russian troops continued to focus their assaults on the logistical centres of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.

A US military official said North Korean troops had suffered several hundred casualties in Kursk region, and their ranks had ranged from lower-level troops to “very near the top”.

As the war approaches its third year, Ukrainian troops are weary and outnumbered along the 1,170km (727 mile) frontline.

Not so very long ago, Vladimir Putin, the would-be reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, had some cause for satisfaction. True, his ill-fated “special military operation” in Ukraine had spectacularly failed in its initial stated aim of subsuming the country into a Greater Russia, resistance supposedly crumbling in days, with Volodymyr Zelensky skulking off into exile.

The Ukrainians are continuing their resistance and, for now, have been able to disrupt Russian bombing raids with longer-range Western missiles. They’ve also carried out the audacious assassination, close to the Kremlin, of the Russian general in charge of chemical weapons. Footage released by Kyiv purports to show bewildered North Korean soldiers cowering in surrender (and has not been challenged).

A couple of elderly Russian oil tankers have broken up in the Black Sea; and the fall of Bashar al-Assad has fractured Russian power in the Middle East, weakening Iran with it and jeopardising important military and naval bases in Syria. No longer can Iran freely traverse Syria to arm terrorists, and the ayatollahs look increasingly weak and isolated in the face of Israeli attacks and their own feeble attempts to penetrate Benjamin Netanyahu’s defensive Iron Dome. Russia is on the back foot.

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Ukraine’s SBU security service said it has uncovered 12 agents spying for Russia on locations hosting F-16 fighter jets and air defence systems across Ukraine.

It said it detained “the biggest network of agents” in Ukraine’s north and south.

The possible deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops in Ukraine could be raised at a meeting of European leaders in Brussels today, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The meeting to discuss support for Ukraine, almost three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, will gather the leaders of Germany, France, Poland and Nato, among others, according to sources.

The Ukrainian leader publicly floated the idea of foreign troops being deployed until Ukraine could join Nato during a meeting with a German politician earlier this month.

The possibility was first raised by French president Emmanuel Macron in February but no consensus was reached among European leaders on the matter.

Answering questions from reporters about it potentially being discussed in Brussels, Zelenskiy said that “everyone who will be there has the right to raise this or that issue”. “There could be questions not only about the (foreign) contingent, but also questions that Ukraine will raise,” he told a joint press conference with Polish prime minister Donald Tusk in Lviv.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy will travel to Kyiv and several other European capitals in early January, sources said.

Retired lieutenant-general Keith Kellogg, who is set to serve as Mr Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, is not planning to visit Moscow during this trip, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters.

The incoming Trump administration is aiming to bring a swift end to the Russia-Ukraine war, according to two sources with knowledge of the trip’s planning.

Mr Kellogg will visit senior leaders in Kyiv, and his team is working to set up meetings with leaders in other European capitals, such as Rome and Paris, said the sources.

Planning for the trip is still being finalied and the itinerary could change, one of the sources warned.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to allies on Tuesday to ensure the so-called shadow fleet of vessels used by Russia to circumvent sanctions no longer operated in the European waters.

Zelenskiy posted on X that the fleet should be limited “not just with sanctions, but in other ways too”. “This fleet is one of the biggest threats. Putin uses these tankers to finance his war, and most of these vessels are old, poorly maintained, and operate without any oversight,” the Ukrainian leader said.

On Monday, the European Union adopted sanctions targeting 52 more vessels from Moscow’s shadow fleet that try to circumvent Western restrictions to move oil, arms and grains. It brings the total listed to 79.

Britain on Tuesday also sanctioned 20 ships that it said were using illicit practices to avoid sanctions on Russian oil.

Nato has taken over coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the US as planned, a source said yesterday.

The move will allow Nato a more direct role in the war against Russia’s invasion and safeguard the support mechanism against the incoming Donald Trump administration.

The headquarters of Nato’s new Ukraine mission, dubbed Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU), is located at Clay Barracks, a US base in the German town of Wiesbaden. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters it was now fully operational.

Nato’s military headquarters SHAPE said its Ukraine mission was beginning to assume responsibilities from the US and international organisations.

“The work of NSATU… is designed to place Ukraine in a position of strength, which puts Nato in a position of strength to keep safe and prosperous its one billion people in both Europe and North America,” said US army general Christopher G Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

“This is a good day for Ukraine and a good day for Nato,” he said.

A defence expert has warned of major Russian retaliation after a senior Russian general in charge of nuclear protection forces died in Moscow yesterday. Igor Kirillov was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt.

His assistant was also killed, a Russian investigative committee said.

Ukrainian prosecutors had charged Kirillov with the use of banned chemical weapons in the Ukraine war the day before he died.

Tobias Ellwood, an army reservist and former defence minister, told Sky News on Tuesday: “This will be an embarrassment for Putin. He cannot hide this from the Russian people.

“I would expect a major retaliation on the Russian side.”

North Korea has suffered “several hundred” casualties while fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine in the Kursk border region, a senior US military official said yesterday, a much higher toll than one given by Kyiv earlier this week.

The official didn’t provide details on exactly how many have been killed, but said the North Korean forces don’t appear to be battle-hardened, which contributes to the number of casualties they’ve had.

“Several hundred casualties is our latest estimate that the DPRK has suffered,” the official said on condition of anonymity. This “would include everything from… light wounds up to being KIA (killed in action)”, the official said, with soldiers of “all ranks” among the casualties.

The estimate of North Korean casualties comes several weeks after Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent between 10,000 and 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost 3-year war.