Ukraine news – live: Russia ‘has proof’ of UK involvement in Black Sea drone strike

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of engaging in “energy terrorism” after Russian strikes on Ukraine‘s energy network left millions of residents without power.

About 4.5 million people were without electricity across the country, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 450,000 apartments in the capital alone did not have on Friday.

“I appeal to all residents of the capital: save electricity as much as possible, because the situation remains difficult!” the mayor wrote on Telegram.

State-owned grid operator Ukrenergo reported on Friday that emergency blackouts would be taking place across Kyiv.

Russia has carried out missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian power facilities, particularly in recent weeks. In his address, Zelenskyy described the targeting of energy infrastructure as a sign of weakness.

“The very fact that Russia is resorting to energy terrorism shows the weakness of our enemy,” he said. “They cannot beat Ukraine on the battlefield, so they try to break our people this way.”

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Economic ties

Russia and North Korea recently restarted train travel for the first time since railway journeys were cut during the COVID pandemic with an unusually opulent cargo - 30 grey thoroughbred horses. Russia‘s RIA state news agency said medicines would follow in later cargos.

The vast majority of North Korea’s trade goes through China, but Russia is a potentially important partner as well, particularly for providing oil, experts said. Moscow has denied breaking U.N. sanctions, but Russian tankers have been accused of helping evade caps on exporting oil to North Korea and sanctions monitors have reported labourers remain in Russia despite a ban.

Russian officials have openly discussed “working on political arrangements” to employ 20,000 to 50,000 North Korean labours, despite U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban such arrangements.

Russian officials and leaders in the breakaway regions in Ukraine have also discussed the possibility of having North Korean workers help rebuild those war-torn areas.

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Ukraine war support

North Korea has reciprocated with public support for Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was one of the only countries to recognise the independence of breakaway Ukrainian regions, and it expressed support for Russia‘s proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine.

“Moscow’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has ushered in a new geopolitical reality in which the Kremlin and (North Korea) may become increasingly close, perhaps even to the point of resurrecting the quasi-alliance relationship that had existed during the Cold War,” Artyom Lukin, a professor at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, wrote in a recent report for 38 North.

It is notable Pyongyang has begun using the new phrase “tactical and strategic collaboration” to describe its relationship with Russia, he added.

Both Russia and North Korea have denied claims by the United States that Russia has sought to buy millions of rounds of ammunition and other weapons from North Korea.

The United States said this week it has information indicating North Korea is covertly supplying Russia with a “significant” number of artillery shells, in what would be a further sign of deepening ties between the two pariah states.

As Russia‘s isolation over its war in Ukraine has grown, it has seen increasing value in North Korea. For North Korea’s part, relations with Russia haven’t always been as warm as they were during the heady days of the Soviet Union, but now the country is reaping clear benefits from Moscow’s need for friends.

Here’s how North Korea-Russia relations began, and how they are becoming closer:

Political backing

Communist North Korea was formed in the early days of the Cold War with the backing of the Soviet Union. North Korea later battled the South and its U.S. and United Nations allies to a stalemate in the 1950-1953 Korean War with extensive aid from China and the Soviet Union.

North Korea was heavily reliant on Soviet aid for decades, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, it helped spark a deadly famine in the North.

Pyongyang’s leaders have tended to try to use Beijing and Moscow to balance each other. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un initially had a relatively cool relationship with both countries, which both joined the United States in imposing strict sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear tests.

After his country’s last nuclear test in 2017, Kim took steps to repair ties.

Kim met Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019 for the first time in a summit in the Russian city of Vladivostok.

In October, Kim sent a birthday greeting to Putin, congratulating him for “crushing the challenges and threats of the United States”.

Russia has joined China in opposing new sanctions on North Korea, vetoing a U.S.-led push in May and publicly splitting the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for the first time since it started punishing Pyongyang in 2006.

The United States accused Russia and China on Friday of providing “blanket protection” to North Korea from further UN Security Council action and said the pair had “bent over backwards” to justify Pyongyang's ballistic missile launches.

The United States, Britain, France, Albania, Ireland and Norway requested the Security Council meet on Friday after North Korea, formally known as the DPRK, fired multiple missiles, including a possible failed intercontinental ballistic missile.

“You don't get to abandon Security Council responsibilities because the DPRK might sell you weapons to fuel your war of aggression in Ukraine, or because you think they make a good regional buffer to the United States,” US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the council, referring to Russia and China.

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Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been disconnected from the country’s grid after Russian shelling destroyed its last remaining high-voltage power lines, according to officials.

Ukraine’s atomic energy company Energoatom had previously warned that Russia’s efforts to cut the Zaporizhzhia plant off from the grid risked a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems.

The power plant only has 15 days’ worth of fuel left to run the generators, Energoatom said. The plant’s blocks 5 and 6 are being switched into cold state, it said.

Namita Singh reports:

Poland’s defence minister has ordered the immediate construction of a temporary barrier along the border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in order that the country “feels safe”.

Mariusz Blaszczak said he had authorised the construction of a wall along the 210km (130-mile) border. A spokesperson for the border guard agency, Konrad Szwed, told the Associated Press that the barrier would consist of an electric fence.

Warsaw suspects that Russia plans to use the border to facilitate the crossing of migrants. Amid current simmering tensions over the war in Ukraine, Mr Blaszczak referred to a crisis triggered last autumn when thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants tried to cross the Belarus border into Poland, some of whom died on the journey.

Emily Atkinson reports:

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksy welcomed the UN’s watchdog nuclear conclusion regarding the “dirty bomb” accusations in his nightly video address, anf added the only “dirty thing” in Ukraine now is Russia.

“We have invited the IAEA to check, we have given them full freedom of action at the relevant facilities, and we have clear and irrefutable evidence that no one in Ukraine has created or is creating any dirty bombs,” he said.

“The only thing that is dirty in our region now is the heads of those in Moscow who, unfortunately, seized control of the Russian state and are terrorising Ukraine and the whole world.”

Kyiv and western allies have accused Russia of claiming Ukraine plans to use a “dirty bomb” as a plot to use a threat of a missile laced with nuclear material as a pretext for escalation of the war.

On Sunday night, amid a Ukrainian advance on Kherson, Moscow’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu phoned Western counterparts to tell them his country suspected Kyiv of planning to use a “dirty bomb“ and that the war was trending towards “uncontrolled escalation.”

Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons, while Russia has said it could protect its territory with its nuclear arsenal, writes Emily Atkinson.

Western countries need to reduce their dependencies on China but cannot put the country into one category with Russia, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Friday.

“It is clear that China is consolidating a new era of its external policy, and internal also, (that) China (is) becoming much more assertive, much more on a self-reliant course,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting with his G7 counterparts in the German city of Muenster.

“It is clear that we want to reduce our dependencies, we want to address our vulnerabilities, to strengthen our resilience,” he added. “But at the time being, many member states have a strong economic relationship with China and I don’t think we can put China and Russia on the same level.”