Ukraine-Russia latest: Moscow cargo ship with Syria ties sinks as North Korean troop casualties ‘exceed 3,000’
Zelensky warns of greater military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, including sending more troops and military equipment
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Your support makes all the difference.A Russian cargo ship that Kyiv says was intended to collect weapons from military bases in Syria has sunk on route in the Mediterranean Sea.
Officials in Moscow said two crew members are missing after an engine room explosion sank the Ursa Major between Spain and Algeria. Fourteen other crew were rescued and taken to Spain.
The vessel left the Russian port city of St Petersburg on 11 December, according to ship tracking data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). It was last seen sending a signal at 10.04pm GMT on Monday between Algeria and Spain.
Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed on Monday that the ship had been sent to Syria to remove weapons and military materiel after the fall of Moscow-backed Bashar Al-Assad.
It comes as the North Korean troops killed and injured while fighting alongside Russian forces have surpassed 3,000, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said, as he warned about greater military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.
“There are risks of North Korea sending additional soldiers and military equipment to the Russian army, and we will have tangible responses to this,” Mr Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram yesterday.
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Update: One dead and 11 injured in Russian missile attack on Zelensky’s hometown
One person was killed and 11 were wounded by a ballistic missile strike on an apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, local officials said on Tuesday, and Kyiv condemned the Christmas eve attack.
“The monsters landed a direct hit on a four-storey residential block with 32 apartments,” the head of the city’s military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, wrote on Telegram.
One man whose body had been pulled from under the rubble could not be revived by medics, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
“While other countries of the world are celebrating Christmas, Ukrainians are continuing to suffer from endless Russian attacks,” Ukraine‘s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram.
Governor Lysak posted photographs of rescuers trawling through a large pile of rubble, recovering a person covered in dust and loading them into an ambulance.
“There may still be people under the rubble,” he wrote shortly before 18:00 local time (1600 GMT), more than two hours after the strike.
Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is a steelmaking city with a pre-war population of more than 600,000.
Its southern outskirts lie about 40 miles (65 km) from the nearest Russian-occupied territory, and it has regularly been the target of Russian missile attacks throughout the war.
Watch: Russian ship sinks after mysterious explosion
Watch: Russian ship sinks after mysterious explosion.
Footage shows a Russian vessel moments before it sank, having reportedly experienced an explosion in the engine room. The ship was filmed tilting dangerously to one side as it drifted through the Mediterranean. Its last signal came at 10.04 pm GMT on 23 December. Ursa Major - the name of the cargo ship - had a history of transporting heavy military equipment and was under sanctions. The vessel sank between Spain and Algeria. Two sailors died and 14 were rescued by Spanish forces. An investigation has been launched to discover why the vessel sank.
Russian missile attack injures six in Zelensky’s hometown
A Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih has injured half a dozen people, locals have reported.
Footage reposted below shows the damage caused by the missile attack, which hit a residential building.
At least six people have been injured, three of whom were hospitalised. Two people were rescued from the rubble.
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