Kyiv has accused North Korea of sending military personnel to help the Kremlin’s invasion force, as another deadly Russian missile attack hit the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa and a French researcher was jailed for three years by a Moscow court.
“We see an increasing alliance between Russia and regimes like North Korea. This is no longer just about transferring weapons. It is actually about transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“Obviously, in such circumstances, our relations with partners need to develop further,” he added, urging allies “to act right now to prevent Russia and its accomplices from adapting to our capabilities”.
Mr Zelenskiy reiterated a call for more weapons, for permission to use western-supplied arms to strike deeper inside Russia and for “increasing the pressure on the aggressor ... and it’s about preventing an even larger war”.
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South Korean defence minister Kim Yong-hyun said last week that it was “highly likely” that six North Korean officers were killed in a recent missile strike on occupied eastern Ukraine, as reported by media in Kyiv, and said Moscow-Pyongyang relations were “evolving to be almost as close as a military alliance”.
Ukraine and the US say Russia is making increasing use of North Korean shells and missiles in attacks on Ukraine. Pyongyang has denied sending arms to Moscow and the Kremlin said reports of North Koreans serving alongside Russians in Ukraine “looks like another bit of fake news”.
One port worker was killed and eight injured on Monday in the latest in a string of Russian missile attacks on the port of Odesa, from which Ukraine sends grain and other food exports around the world. Two cargo ships were damaged in the strike.
Heavy fighting continued in and around the small, strategic city of Toretsk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and Russia claimed to have seized the village of Levadne, in the neighbouring southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine says it is holding its ground in the Russian border region of Kursk, where it seized some 1,000sq km of territory in August.
Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova said more than 30,000 people, including nearly 8,000 children, had been evacuated from the border area and that Ukrainian forces were suspected of forcibly taking more than 1,000 residents to Ukraine in what she called “a gross violation of their rights”.
Kyiv says its troops are not mistreating Russian civilians and invited United Nations and Red Cross staff to monitor the situation in Kursk, but Russia refused.
A Moscow court gave a three-year jail term to French man Laurent Vinatier, who works for a Swiss conflict mediation group, for gathering information on Russia’s military without registering as a “foreign agent”.
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