Ukraine war latest: Zelensky says Putin using country as missile testing ground

A high-ranking North Korean General is reportedly injured in a recent Ukrainian strike in Russia’s Kursk region, Western officials said yesterday.

This is the first casualty of a senior North Korean military officer in the escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to the Western officials, reported The Wall Street Journal. Ukraine launched at least 10 British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles into Kursk on Wednesday, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

It is not immediately clear how the senior North Korean officer was wounded or his identity.

The US had declared that the North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine will become “fair game and fair targets for the Ukrainians” in October, John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council had said last month after the troubling intelligence confirmed Pyongyang was sending its troops to fight in the war.

The damage of two undersea internet cables in the Baltic sea must be seen as an act of sabotage, German defence minister Boris Pistorius has said.

A pair of fibre-optic communications cables were severed on Sunday and Monday, in an incident which “immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”, Finland and Germany said in a joint statement.

A 745-mile (1,200 kilometre) cable linking Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working at 2am on Monday, according to Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia.

Another cable linking Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island went out of service at 8am on Monday, according to a Lithuanian communications firm.

My colleague Alex Croft has the full report:

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate range missile based on it’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. “This was new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield, so that was certainly of concern,” Ms Singh said, noting that the missile could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. The UD was notified ahead of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels, she said.

The Kremlin fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine yesterday in response to Kyiv’s use this week of American and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russia, president Vladimir Putin said.

For Ghulam, it began with a form handed to him by a colleague, offering him a way out. For more than 12 years, he had been part of an elite troop of Afghan special forces set up, trained and paid by the British government.

Now, after being forced to flee the Taliban and leave his homeland for Iran, he worked long days in a recycling factory and had to evade police because of his undocumented status.

The fellow Afghan who gave Ghulam the form knew of his military background and thought he might be open to an offer. For some in Ghulam’s situation, a form comes first; for others, it’s contact by phone from other Afghan veterans.

Slovakia’s Economy Ministry is analysing new U.S. sanctions against Gazprombank and will know their potential impact on Slovakia soon, the ministry said on Thursday.

Slovakia’s state-owned gas buyer SPP has a long-term contract with Gazprom and continues to buy Russian gas.

Analysts and observers say that the loosening of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western missiles is unlikely to change the the course of the war, but it puts the Russian army in a more vulnerable position and could complicate the logistics that are crucial in warfare.

“It is an important move and it pulls against, undermines the narrative that Putin had been trying to establish that it was fine for Russia to rain down Iranian drones and North Korean missiles on Ukraine but a reckless escalation for Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons at legitimate targets in Russia,” said Peter Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser who now sits in the House of Lords.

Vladimir Putin has claimed Moscow launched a new hypersonic ballistic missile against Ukraine in response for long-range strikes by Kyiv inside Russia using UK and US long-range missiles.

The Russian leader said the “Oreshnik,” or Hazel, medium-range missile had been used in some of its latest strikes. Earlier, Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired a intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro – in what would be the first recorded use of the weapon during war

Ukrainian air defence forces said the missile – that has a range of more than 3,400 miles and can be used to carry nuclear warheads – was fired from Russia’s Astrakhan region, on the Caspian Sea. However, American officials said an initial US assessment indicated the strike was carried out with an intermediate-range ballistic missile which cannot travel so far, something backed by Putin’s remarks.

My colleague Alex Croft has the full report:

While refusing to confirm whether the UK had given permission for long range missiles to be fired by Ukraine into Russian territory, Defence secretary John Healey expressed little surprise at the reports Russia had fired a new ballistic missile at the country.

He told MPs: “There are unconfirmed media reports today of Russia firing a new ballistic missile into Ukraine which we know they have been preparing for months.”

He warned: “This is a serious time. Intelligence reveals that the frontline is less stable than at any time since the Russian invasion in 2022.

“We have seen in recent weeks a very clear escalation from Putin and his forces. They have stepped up attacks on energy systems in Ukraine, ahead of winter. They have stepped up attacks on civilian centres, killing children. At least 10,000 North Korean troops have been sent to the front line.”

Joe Biden dropped his opposition to Ukraine firing US missiles at on Russian territory in response to North Korea’s entry to the war, in a shift which took on extra urgency following Donald Trump’s election victory, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

Moscow’s decision to deploy North Korean soldiers to Russia’s Kursk region represented a major escalation that demanded a response, a senior US official and two other sources familiar with the matter said.

Mr Trump’s victory added pressure on the Biden Administration to loosen the rules on the use of the weapons and take other steps to bolster Ukraine as it suffers repeated setbacks on the battlefield, according to two other sources familiar with the matter.

Easing controls on the use of the missiles was intended to send a message to the North Koreans and Russians that the shift was unacceptable, as well as hamper their efforts to push Ukrainians out of Kursk, a senior US official familiar with the administration’s thinking said.

The official acknowledged that relaxing the restrictions risked a further escalation of the conflict – but noted that Russia has so far taken no action against states other than Ukraine, while a congressional aide told the news agency that they believed the new policy only applied to the Kursk region.