Ukraine-Russia latest: Biden approves another US weapon to slow Russian army as Putin ramps up nuclear threat

The US embassy in Kyiv has received information of a potential significant air attack today and will be closed, the US Department of State Consular Affairs said in a post on X.

North Korea recently supplied additional artillery systems to Russia to support its war efforts against Ukraine, while some of the thousands of North Korean troops deployed in Russia have begun engaging in combat, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers today.

The South Korean assessment came after Russia warned Monday that US president Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire” of the war. US officials said Biden’s decision was triggered almost entirely by North Korea’s entry into the war.

In a closed-door briefing at parliament, the National Intelligence Service said that North Korea exported 170mm self-propelled guns and 240mm multiple rocket launch systems to Russia, according to lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun, who attended the meeting.

Mr Lee told reporters that the NIS assessed those weapons are a type of artillery the Russian military doesn’t operate so North Korea likely dispatched personnel to teach the Russians how to use them and handle their maintenance.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has said that China has an important role to play in avoiding nuclear escalation, after Russian president Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike.

Meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping in Rio de Janeiro as part of the G20 summit, Mr Macron said he asked him to put pressure on Mr Putin to end the war with Ukraine.

Mr Macron said North Korea’s decision to send troops to fight in Ukraine had raised the stakes for China, and that it should push for a de-escalation after Mr Putin’s decision to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the summit, the French president said he would invite Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk to France in February for an artificial intelligence summit.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 44 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 20 over the northwestern Novgorod region, Russia’s defence ministry said this morning.

The other 24 drones were destroyed over several regions in Russia’s central and western part, the ministry said.

The ministry did not provide any information about potential damage as result of the attacks.

Joe Biden has sensationally granted Kyiv permission to use “long-range “ missiles to strike targets deep within Russia, despite Vladimir Putin describing such a move as an act of war.

The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to send thousands of troops to Russia in support of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and comes after months of pressure from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

He argued the US ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.

We look closer at the weapons that could mark a turning point in the war:

European delegates at the G20 summit in Brazil were unhappy with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s decision to end talks and issue the group’s final statement a day early to curtail prickly discussion on the war in Ukraine, sources said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday he regretted that the G20 communique did not underscore Russia’s responsibility in starting the Ukraine war, particularly on the 1,000th day of its full-scale invasion, saying: “It is too little when the G20 cannot find the words to make it clear Russia is responsible.”

Wording on Ukraine has been thorny at G20 meetings since the war began, because Russia and its allies are sitting at the table. Russian president Vladimir Putin did not attend the Rio summit but was represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

The communique is usually issued at the end of the summit, but Lula decided to approve the text while wrapping up Monday’s plenary session – at a moment the leaders of France, Germany and the United States were not in the room, diplomats said.

A European official called Lula’s maneuver “brutal” but his country decided to respect the prerogative of the summit host to decide when to issue the joint statement.

Brazil hastened approval of the communique on Monday night to avoid the risk of the summit ending without a final declaration, even though the Europeans were asking for stronger language on Russia’s role in the war, three Brazilian diplomats who were present at the talks told Reuters.

Around 10,900 North Korea troops have been deployed to Kursk as part of Russia’s airborne unit and marines, with some having already participated in battles in the Ukraine war, a South Korean lawmaker said today, citing the country’s spy agency.

North Korea has also shipped additional arms for the war in Ukraine including howitzers and multiple rocket launchers, the lawmaker said, citing the National Intelligence Service.

The spy agency is still trying to determine the exact number of North Korean troop casualties and whether any had surrendered amid conflicting information, the lawmaker said.

Ukraine’s use of US given ATACMS missiles to strike deep inside Russia has marked a new phase of war, a senior Russian official has warned.

Ukraine used US’s ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory yesterday taking advantage of newly granted permission from the outgoing administration of US president Joe Biden on the war’s 1,000th day.

Ukraine said it struck a Russian arms depot about 110km (70 miles) inside Russia, an attack that caused secondary explosions. Ukraine’s military did not publicly specify the weapons used, but a Ukrainian government source and a US official confirmed it had used ATACMS.

“This is, of course, a signal that they want to escalate,” Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in Brazil yesterday at G20 news conference.

“We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly,” he added, accusing Washington of helping Kyiv operate the missiles.

Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel a Russian air attack on Kyiv early today, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said.

Reuters’ witnesses heard multiple blasts in what sounded like air defence units in operation.