Ukraine-Russia war latest: North Korea troops in Russia shows Putin is desperate to make up for losses, say G7

Ukraine is currently facing “one of the most powerful Russian offensives” since the beginning of the war in February 2022, its army chief has warned.

Russia has been steadily making gains in the Donbas region and capturing villages amid reports that North Korea has deployed about 10,000 troops to join Vladimir Putin’s war.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, said the situation on the front line “remains difficult” and certain areas “require constant renewal of resources of Ukrainian units”.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion,” the top commander said over the weekend.

The war is entering what Russian analysts say is its most dangerous phase as Moscow’s forces advance, North Korea sends troops to Russia and the West ponders how the conflict will end.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been traveling the world lobbying Nato countries to allow Kyiv the use of the long-range missiles they have provided to strike targets deep inside Russia.

A court in Russia's far-eastern city of Vladivostok on Friday convicted a former U.S. Consulate worker charged with cooperating with a foreign state and sentenced him to four years and 10 months in prison.

Robert Shonov, a Russian citizen and former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok, was arrested in May 2023. Russia's top domestic security agency, the FSB, accused him of “gathering information about the special military operation" in Ukraine, a partial call-up in Russian regions and its influence on "protest activities of the population in the runup to the 2024 presidential election.”

The U.S. State Department last year condemned the arrest and said the allegations against Shonov “are wholly without merit.”

The Biden administration announced Friday it was sending an additional $425 million in military assistance to Ukraine as Kyiv prepares to face Russian forces augmented by more than 10,000 North Korean troops.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had said more aid was coming, and soon, during his visit to Kyiv last week. This aid package includes weapons that will be pulled from existing U.S. stockpiles, including air defense interceptors for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and 155 mm artillery, and armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korea’s foreign minister in the Kremlin on Monday at a time of mounting concern in the West that North Korean soldiers are about to enter the Ukraine war on Moscow’s side.

Video of the meeting showed the pair shaking hands for a full minute as Putin greeted Choe Son Hui. Putin noted that they were meeting on Russia’s National Unity Day, a public holiday, and Choe conveyed “sincere, warm, comradely greetings” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The United States says North Korea has sent some 10,000 troops to Russia, including 8,000 to the western Kursk region where Russia is still battling to expel Ukrainian troops who broke across the border in August.

Putin, who signed a treaty with Kim in June that includes a mutual defence clause, has neither confirmed nor denied the North Korean troop presence. He has said that Russia is free to implement the pact as it sees fit.

Germany’s top diplomat arrived Monday in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on an unannounced visit, in what appeared to be a show of European support for Ukraine on the eve of a U.S. presidential election that could bring far-reaching changes in Washington’s policy toward Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.

Germany is Ukraine’s second biggest weapons supplier after the U.S., and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock vowed that Berlin’s backing would remain steadfast.

“Together with many partners around the world, Germany stands firmly by Ukraine’s side,” she said, German news agency dpa reported. “We will support the Ukrainians for as long as they need us so that they can continue on their path to a just peace.”

Russia’s defence ministry said its armed forces had downed four US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and 42 Ukrainian drones in the last 24 hours on Monday, Reuters has reported.

The ministry said four different troop groupings were improving their positions, including the southern group which it said was making advances deep into Ukrainian defences.

Top South Korean and European Union officials have condemned North Korea’s reported troop dispatch to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In a meeting in Seoul on Monday, South Korean defense minister Kim Yong Hyun and the EU’s visiting foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, expressed “serious concerns” about North Korea’s reported troop dispatch and “strongly condemned” it, according to a statement from the South Korean defense ministry.

The two agreed to work together with the international community to try to obstruct Russian-North Korean security cooperation, the statement said.

In a background briefing with local media on Monday, South Korea’s military said North Korea has built anti-tank, trench-like structures at two sites near the Korean border. According to US, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence assessments, North Korea was estimated to have moved about 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia.

Medics in Ukraine are being urged to remove any markings on their vehicles that may set them apart otherwise they’ll be shot at “within 15 minutes”, the Economist has reported.

Earlier this year, the World Health Organisation reported that ambulance workers and other personnel servicing health transport face a risk of injury and death three times higher than that of other healthcare service workers.

A secret underground hospital’s chief medical officer told the Economist: “They don’t even know what it means” when asked about Russia following the Geneva conventions, which forbid targeting medical units.

He said: “If you put a red cross on a car, you’ll be fired on within 15 minutes.”

Moldova’s pro-western President Maia Sandu has won a second term in office in what was a pivotal presidential runoff against a Russia-friendly opponent.

The race was overshadowed by claims of Russian interference, voter fraud and intimidation in the European Union candidate country.

Like Georgia and neighboring Ukraine, Moldova aspires to join the EU but is caught in a constant geopolitical tug between Moscow and the West.

In a victory statement early Monday, Sandu told voters they had "given a lesson in democracy, worthy of being written in history books" and also noted the significant role the diaspora played in her reelection.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moldova applied to join the EU. It was granted candidate status in June of that year, and in summer 2024, Brussels agreed to start membership negotiations.

The sharp westward shift irked Moscow and significantly soured relations with Chisinau.