Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky urges Trump to back Kyiv as Kremlin says ‘let’s see’ if he helps end war

On the front lines of Ukraine’s eastern conflict, soldiers are still focused on survival.

Amid the daily barrage of Russian fire, a 39-year-old artillery commander known only as Mozart is wary of the political shifts sweeping across the Atlantic.

The news of Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election reached them through brief updates from journalists, but their main concern remains unchanged: the flow of military aid from Washington.

"We don’t care who is president, as long as they don’t cut us off," Mozart said. "We need weapons, we need support."

Mr Trump’s return to the White House raises troubling questions for Ukraine, which has depended on US assistance since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Under Mr Trump’s first term, the US sent Ukraine crucial weapons, like Javelin anti-tank missiles, but his stance on foreign entanglements - coupled with his history of praise for Vladimir Putin - has sparked fears that support for Ukraine might dwindle under his leadership.

The new Republican President has repeatedly said he could broker peace between Ukraine and Russia within a day if elected, but he has yet to clarify how such a deal would be achieved.

Russia will keep sending nuclear warning signals to its enemies in the West until they get the message, an influential foreign policy hawk has said.

Speaking on the Valdai forum, where Putin will speak on tomorrow, security expert Sergei Karaganov urged President Vladimir Putin to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and in the past has even advocated a pre-emptive strike on a NATO country.

Mr Karaganov told Reuters he hoped that strikes against Western countries would not happen. But he said the changes announced by Putin to Russia’s nuclear doctrine were part of an effort to “sober up our Western partners, especially the Europeans”.

“That’s exactly it...There will be steps up the ladder of nuclear escalation, of which several have been made, (and) there will be more. Until finally the Europeans run away,” he said.

Since the start of the Ukraine war, Putin has staged a series of nuclear exercises, changed Russia’s position on major arms treaties and announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in its ally Belarus, which borders three NATO countries.

Russia says it is the West that is raising the risk of a nuclear confrontation by arming Ukraine and accused the US and its allies of using Ukraine as an instrument in a proxy war aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Mr Karaganov argued that Russia needs to restore the West’s fear of nuclear weapons in order to deter its enemies.

“They have stopped being afraid of war. And especially the Europeans. They are climbing into a third world war right before our eyes,” he said.

Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.

Poland said last month that it has arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and is searching for two others.

Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene said Tuesday there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration.

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Germany is the first nation to discuss its response to North Korea’s military involvement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said he had discussed with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock the “need for decisive action” in response to North Korean involvement in the war with Russia.

“We urge Europe to realise that the DPRK [North Korea’s official name Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] troops are now carrying an aggressive war in Europe against a sovereign European state,” he told a briefing after meeting Ms Baerbock in Kyiv.

Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking later during his nightly video address, said a meeting of top commanders had considered a report by Ukrainian intelligence on the presence of North Korean troops in Russia. He repeated his call for greater action from Ukraine’s Western allies.

“There are already 11,000 in the Kursk region,” Mr Zelensky said, referring to the southern Russian region where Ukrainian troops have seized chunks of land since an incursion there in August.

“We see an increase in North Koreans, but we don’t see any increase in the reaction from our partners.”

During Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has asked Sir Keir Starmer what he will do to encourage Donald Trump to change his mind about Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Sir Keir said he will continue to talk out about “Russian aggression” and said that he looks forward to working with Mr Trump “to ensure that [special] relationship stays”.

Germany will give Ukraine another €200 m (£167m) in aid to support the country during its third winter at war with Russia, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said during a visit to Kyiv yesterday.

Ms Baerbock has stressed Germany’s continued backing for Ukraine during the trip, which comes amid growing nerves over the impact today’s election in the United States will have on military support for the country.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said it has "no illusions" about Donald Trump and vowed to defend its national interests.

In a statement, the Kremlin said that Moscow would engage with the incoming US administration under President Donald Trump.

The statement added that Russia’s priorities in relation to its ongoing military operation in Ukraine would remain unchanged.

It also reiterated its focus on achieving the objectives of what it refers to as its "special military operation," underscoring that its position on the conflict would not be influenced by the change in leadership in Washington.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven democracies and three key allies said on Tuesday they were gravely concerned by the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia and the possibility they may be used in the war against Ukraine.

“The DPRK’s (North Korea) direct support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, besides showing Russia’s desperate efforts to compensate its losses, would mark a dangerous expansion of the conflict,” the ministers said in a statement.

Besides G7 members the United States, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany, France and Canada, the statement was also signed by South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The ministers said they condemned “in the strongest possible terms” increased military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, including Russia’s “unlawful procurement” of North Korean ballistic missiles.

They said they were deeply concerned about the potential for any transfer of nuclear or ballistic missile-related technology to North Korea, and would work with international partners “for a coordinated response to this new development”.