Ukraine-Russia war live: Nato chief says North Korean troops in Kursk as Putin issues long-range arms warning

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies yesterday reached consensus on delivery of some $50bn in loans to Ukraine backed by the earnings from frozen Russian sovereign assets starting as early as December.

“These loans will be serviced and repaid by future flows of extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian Sovereign Assets,” the G7 statement said.

“Our aim is to begin disbursing the funds by the end of the year,” said the statement, which was released as global finance chiefs were meeting in Washington for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings.

An accompanying statement from G7 finance ministers said that the loans would be disbursed through a series of bilateral loans, starting as soon as 1 December and continuing through the end of 2027 “in installments that will reflect Ukraine’s urgent financing needs.”

Each bilateral loan would enter into force no later than 30 June 2025, which provides some timing flexibility for G7 members to arrange details.

Russia’s air defence destroyed at least 30 Ukrainian drones overnight, the defence ministry said early this morning.

The drones were destroyed over Russia’s southern regions of Voronezh, Bryansk, Oryol, Lipetsk and Belgorod, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

One woman was moderately injured as a result of the drone attack in the border region of Belgorod, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. He added that a few cars were also damaged.

Maxim Yegorov, governor of the Tambov region, some 450km southeast of Moscow, said a Ukrainian drone fell in the Michurinsky district of the region, sparking a short-lived fire but causing no injuries or material damage.

The Russian defence ministry reports only how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launches. Russian officials also rarely disclose the full scale of damage inflicted by the attacks, especially when they involve military or energy infrastructure.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has often said that its attacks inside Russia target infrastructure key to Russian war efforts and are in response to Moscow’s continued strikes on Ukrainian territory.

Former diplomats tell Tom Watling that Vladimir Putin’s deepening ties with North Korea risks damaging relations with China

The US has joined Ukraine and South Korea in confirming reports of North Korea dispatching troops, estimated to be in the thousands, to aid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

“We are no longer in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia, North Korea and Ukraine,” said Marie Dumoulin of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

But analysts said it was unclear how North Korean troops will be used adding the North Korean forces do not have combat experience.

“I don’t think that sending a few thousand North Korean troops, whose level of training we don’t know, will make much difference on the battlefield in operational terms,” said Dumoulin.

“In any case, 10,000 soldiers is not that many,” added Isabelle Facon from the France-based Foundation of Strategic Research.

The Kremlin has denied a Wall Street Journal report about regular contacts between Elon Musk and President Vladimir Putin.

“No, this is not true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov said that Putin had one contact with Musk - the world’s richest man - and it was before 2022.

The Journal said Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022. Peskov said the report was absolutely false.

One Russian soldier was killed after a planned ambush on a convoy, according to Russian state media.

“Unknown people attacked a military convoy in the Grozny suburbs,” reported Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

“One serviceman was killed and a second was wounded. Measures are being taken to find and detain the attackers,” the statement added.

A local resident described the attack as being “rapid and well-coordinated” with the attackers fleeing shortly after.

The witness was unable to describe the gunmen but indicated that there was more than one attacker.

Vladimir Putin did not deny reports that North Korea sent troops to Russia to join the Russian president’s war in Ukraine but instead pointed to his country’s recent military treaty with Pyongyang which deals with mutual defence.

Mr Putin was asked by a reporter about satellite imagery apparently showing North Korean troops operating in Russia at a news conference on Thursday during the end of the Brics summit in the Russian city of Kazan.

“Images are a serious matter. If images exist, they indicate something,” Mr Putin said. He went on to attack the US for “escalating tensions in Ukraine” and denounced “direct involvement of Nato troops” in the conflict.

The head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported that two people were killed in an artillery barrage on Stanislav.

“Unfortunately, today the Russian army took the lives of two more people in the Kherson region. Around two o’clock in the afternoon, the enemy fired on Stanislav with artillery.

“Two men were fatally wounded. Both died at the scene. I express my sincere condolences to the families of the victims,” he said.

The Kherson Regional Military Administration added: “A man, 49, sustained blast trauma and concussion. The victim was outside at the time of the strike. He refused to be hospitalized, so medics treated him at the scene.”

Kharviv authorities have revealed the body of a man was found in a house in Radkove in the Chuhuiv district,

“Rescuers recovered the body of a dead 65-year-old man from the rubble of a private house in the village of Radkove, Chuhuiv district,” a post from Kharkiv Regional Military Administration read.

Another local resident suffered an acute stress reaction.

Russian forces struck three settlements on 26 October, damaging residential buildings.

The head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Serhiy Lysak, said the death toll after Russian strikes on the region has risen to five.

“Rescuers have recovered the body of a man from the rubble,” he wrote.

It came after a Russian missile hit a residential area in the central city of Dnipro, killing a 14-year-old and four others with at least 21 others injured including an eight-year-old and teenagers.

The wife and teenage daughter of a local policeman were pulled dead from the rubble, police reported.

The attack damaged more than a dozen apartment buildings, private houses and a medical facility.