Ukraine-Russia live: Leaked video shows North Korean soldiers being kitted out for war, Kyiv claims

France is set to use €300 million of frozen Russian assets to purchase military equipment for Ukraine, BFMTV has reported.

Part of the package includes 12 new Caesar self-propelled howitzers, which is a highly capable artillery system, known for its precision and versatility on the battlefield.

Defence minister Sébastien Lecornu said to the French channel that the funds, which will be recovered by the end of the year, will finance not only the Caesar howitzers but also shells, missiles and guided bombs.

Lecornu stressed the importance of strengthening Ukraine’s negotiating position, saying that “Russia will only respect a favorable balance of power.”

If North Korea were to send troops to Ukraine to fight with Russia, it would significantly escalate the conflict, NATO Chief Mark Rutte said X.

Rutte said he discussed the alliance’s close partnership with South Korea with president Yoon Suk-yeol, focusing on defense, industrial cooperation and the interconnected security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week that North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 soldiers to help Moscow’s war effort and that some North Korean officers were already deployed on Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

The West has long accused North Korea of supplying weapons to Russia. Rutte and the Pentagon both said last week that they have found no evidence yet of a North Korean military presence on the ground in Ukraine.

China hopes all parties will work to de-escalate the situation following South Korea’s statement that North Korea has sent troops to Russia for deployment in Ukraine, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday.

Ukraine drone strikes targeted Moscow and an explosives manufacturer in the Nizhny Novgorod region overnight, Kyiv’s General Staff reported on Sunday.

It came after Telegram channels and local officials had reported strikes targeted deep inside Russian territory.

Ukrainian forces also say they attacked infrastructure in a military airfield in the Lipetsk region in the overnight attack. The General Staff is still assessing the extent of the damage.

The explosive manufacturer plant in Dzerzhinsk is one of the largest used by Russian forces in the war in Ukraine and is subject to sanctions by the United States and the European Union.

Russian air defence units downed 110 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight on Sunday, including one over Moscow, said the defence ministry. It added that eight Ukrainian drones were destroyed over Nizhny Novgorod.

Four firefighters received minor shrapnel wounds from a drone attack on an industrial zone in Dzerzhinsk city, the regional governor said.

South Korea’s foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador in Seoul in protest over what it has said was the dispatch of North Korean troops to the country for deployment in Ukraine.

Georgy Zinoviev, the top Russian envoy to Seoul, told Yonhap that he met with South Korea’s first vice foreign minister Kim Hong-kyun earlier in the day, according to the news agency.

South Korea’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

South Korea’s spy agency said last week that North Korea had sent 1,500 special forces troops to Russia’s Far East for training and acclimatising at local military bases and that they will likely be deployed for combat in the war in Ukraine.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine this morning in a show of US support for Kyiv just two weeks ahead of the presidential election that is casting uncertainty over the future of Western support.

Mr Austin’s trip, his fourth and likely final visit as president Joe Biden’s Pentagon chief, will include in-depth discussions about the American efforts to help Kyiv shore up its defences as Moscow’s forces advance in the east.

Alexei Navalny’s memoir Patriot compiled from his prison diaries is set to be published tomorrow.

The Russian opposition leader’s memoir has been edited by his widow Yulia Navalnaya and will be released in 22 languages, including Russian.

Navalny, the most prominent critic of Vladimir Putin until his death earlier this year, wrote that he expected to die in prison. “I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life – either the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime,” he wrote in a diary entry in March 2022. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he said.

His widow has said she “wants his voice to be heard loudly even after his death”. Navalny died under unknown circumstances inside a Russian prison facility on 16 February 2024.

Read more here about extracts of Patriot published earlier this month:

Four firefighters in an industrial zone in Dzerzhinsk in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region received minor shrapnel wounds from a Ukrainian drone attack, the region’s governor said on Sunday.

“They were given the necessary medical care, everyone was sent home,” Gleb Nikitin said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Russian RIA agency reported that Russian air defence systems destroyed 110 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, including eight over Nizhny Novgorod region, some 400 km east of Moscow.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 18 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defence ministry said today.

Of these, 11 of the drones were downed over the territory of the Rostov region, while the rest was destroyed over the Bryansk, Kursk and Oryol regions, the ministry said.

Russia launched several waves of drones targeting Kyiv for the second night in a row, damaging residential buildings and injuring at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said early today.

“Another night, another worry,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration said. “The enemy does not reduce the intensity of air attacks on Ukraine and Kyiv.”

About 10 drones targeting the city in several waves and from different directions were destroyed, Mr Popko said. While none of the weapons hit their target, falling debris injured at least one man, he added.

Debris fell onto three of Kyiv’s major districts, causing some damage to roofs and the facades of several residential buildings and power cables, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.