Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s forces ‘face 40,000 casualties’ this month as Zelensky in North Korea warning

Dutch intelligence has confirmed that Russia has deployed at least 1,500 troops from North Korea to fight in the Ukraine war, Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said Friday.

Moscow has not denied previous US claims that North Korea had sent troops to Russia, a move that the West is casting as a significant escalation of the war.

“We expect the troops will mainly be deployed in Kursk and consist of mainly special units from the North Korean army,” Brekelmans said, adding that the first deployment was a way for Russia to test the troops and to gauge international reaction.

Kursk is a Russian city near the Ukrainian border where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

Ukrainian prosecutors on Friday said they had launched an investigation into North Korea’s support for Russia in the war as a possible crime of aggression.

By arming and supplying ground forces engaged in fighting against Ukraine, North Korean officials could face charges, the Prosecutor Generals told Reuters.

“We are documenting and collecting evidence of all possible aspects of such involvement as part of the core proceeding on the crime of aggression,” the office said in a statement.

Ukraine destroyed 36 out of 63 drones launched by Russia during an overnight strike, Kyiv’s air force said on Friday.

The drones were downed over various parts of Ukraine while 16 were “locationally lost”, it added.

In a memoir released eight months after he died in prison, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny never loses faith that his cause is worth suffering for while also acknowledging he wished he could have written a very different book.

“There is a mishmash of bits and pieces, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary,” Navalny writes in “Patriot,” which was published Tuesday, and is, indeed, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary.

“I so much do not want my book to be yet another prison diary. Personally I find them interesting to read, but as a genre — enough is surely enough.”

Read the full report:

Russia sent two waves of drones at the Ukrainian capital overnight in its 15th air attack on Kyiv this month, city officials said on Friday morning.

More than a dozen drones were downed during the strike, which lasted around four hours, city military administrator Serhiy Popko said on Telegram.

He added that authorities had not received any reports of injuries and that debris had ignited a fire that was later extinguished.

Reuters correspondents reported hearing multiple explosions over the city early on Friday.

Russian forces have made a fast advance into the eastern Ukrainian coal mining town of Selydove, according to Russian media and war bloggers.

“The enemy’s defences crumbled suddenly,” said Yuri Podolyaka, a prominent Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger. Other pro-Russian bloggers gave similar accounts, and said that Russia was now in control of part of Selydove.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said that Russian forces were approaching the centre of Selydove, which had a population of over 20,000 before the war.

Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces said the most intense Russian assaults along the entire front line were currently taking place in the vicinity of Selydove, and that Russia used both fighter and bomber aircraft to support its attack there.

The General Staff did not say whether or not the Russians were in the town or if Ukrainian forces had fallen back.

A Ukrainian frontline mapping project known as DeepState showed in its map Russian forces controlling the eastern outskirts of Selydove, while a significant chunk of its centre was assessed as a disputed “grey zone”.

Capturing Selydove would pave the way for a Russian advance on the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk, located about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Selydove.

Vladimir Putin was asked about former US president Donald Trump’s promise to end the fighting in Ukraine at a news conference last might “What Mr Trump said recently, what I heard, (is) he spoke about the desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine,” Putin said. “It seems to me that he said it sincerely. We certainly welcome statements of this kind, no matter who makes them.”

If the United States was open to normal relations with Russia, Moscow would be as well, Mr Putin added.

Ukraine’s military intelligence service said the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

“The first units of the military from the DPRK, which were trained at the eastern Russian training grounds, have already arrived in the combat zone of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In particular, on 23 October, 2024, their presence was recorded in the Kursk region,” the Ukrainian intelligence agency said in a statement.

It said a total of around 12,000 North Korean troops, including 500 officers and three generals, were already in Russia, and training was taking place on five military bases.

Russian deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was appointed responsible for overseeing the training of North Korean military, the agency said.

The Kremlin has previously dismissed reports about the North’s troop deployment as “fake news”. But Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that it was Moscow’s business how to implement a partnership treaty with Pyongyang.