Ukraine Russia war latest: North Korea vows to back Putin as US claims thousands join

Russia has claimed Britain is using a Black Sea grain corridor to deliver arms to Ukraine, after denying London’s allegations that Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports had disrupted crucial grain supplies for other countries.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that an increase in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was delaying vital aid reaching the Palestinians and stopping crucial grain supplies from being delivered to the global south.

The United Nations said last week that Russian attacks on Ukrainian Black Sea ports had damaged six civilian vessels as well as grain infrastructure since 1 September, calling the ramp-up in strikes “distressing”.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Starmer’s allegations that Moscow was damaging global food security with such strikes were wide of the mark.

“Such baseless yet thunderous outrage from London once again confirms just the opposite: the direct involvement of the UK in supplying arms to the Kiev regime using the Black Sea sea corridor,” she alleged in a press briefing.

Zakharova referred to what she said was recent video evidence concerning the port of Yuzhny, in Ukraine’s Odesa region, and purported arms supplies published by Russia’s Ministry of Defence.

Her claims could not be independently verified and there was no immediate response to them from London.

North Korea on Friday bragged of its recently tested new intercontinental ballistic missile, calling it “the world’s strongest,” a claim viewed by outside experts as propaganda though the test showed an advancement in the North’s quest to build a more reliable weapons arsenal.

A missile launched by North Korea on Thursday flew higher and stayed in the air for a longer duration than any other weapon the country had so far fired. It signaled that the North has achieved progress in acquiring a nuclear-armed ICBM that can hit the U.S. mainland. But foreign experts assess that the country has still a few remaining technological issues to master before acquiring such a functioning ICBM.

The former president and prime minister of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, said the US was mistaken if it did not believe Moscow would use nuclear weapons if its existence was threatened, Russia’s.

Medvedev said top US officials do not want World War Three – but that for some reason they believe that “the Russians will never cross a certain line”.

“They are wrong,” he said, adding that Moscow believes the western political establishments in the US and Europe to lack the “foresight and subtlety of mind” once possessed by the late Henry Kissinger.

“If we are talking about the existence of our state, as the president of our country has repeatedly said, your humble servant has said, others have said, of course, we simply will not have any choice,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev, who is now a senior Russian security official, served as the president of Russia between 2008 and 2012 and the prime minister from 2012 to 2020.

Ukrainian air defences downed 39 out of 71 Russian drones during Moscow’s latest overnight air strike on Ukraine, according to Kyiv’s air force.

It said that 21 of the Russian drones were “locationally lost” while five turned back to Russia.

Ukrainian capital Kyiv was the target of airstrikes last night.

The Russian Defence Ministry claims to have captured the villages of Kurakhove and Kvartsytne.

It would be a significant step for Russian forces as they continue to advance on eastern territory in Ukraine. Russian forces appear to have accelerated in their offensive on the eastern front.

Kvartsytne was formerly called Pershotravneve, until it was renamed in September 2024 by the Ukrainian parliament.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to control the entire Donbas region.

As the main point of assault towards Pokrovsk stalled, the Russian military widened across the eastern front, including towards Kurakove to the south.

Japan and the European Union announced a security and defense partnership on Friday as they seek to step up military ties, including joint exercises and exchanges between their defense industries, amid growing tensions with China, North Korea and Russia.

It is the first security partnership that the EU has concluded with an Indo-Pacific country, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters.

Large North Korean troop casualties in Ukraine or Russia would be a major political blow for the country’s 40-year-old ruler, Kim Jong Un.

But experts say Mr Kim may see this as a way to get much needed foreign currency and security support from Russia in return for joining the war.

“Kim Jong Un is taking a big gamble. If there are no large casualty numbers, he will get what he wants to some extent. But things will change a lot if many of his soldiers die in battle,” Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army first lieutenant who leads the World Institute for North Korean Studies, told the Associated Press.

Russia unleashed an overnight drone attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv that lasted into late morning and wounded at least one person, city officials said on Saturday.

Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko.

Mayor Vitalii Klitschko had earlier reported that two people had been injured.

“Another night. Another air-raid alert. Another drone attack. The armed forces of the Russian Federation attacked Kyiv again according to their old and familiar tactics,” Popko wrote on social media.

He said all the drones aimed at Kyiv had been shot down, but warned that others currently located in airspace outside the city could turn toward the capital.

Reuters correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air-raid alert that lasted more than five hours.

Russia has carried out regular airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities behind the front lines of the war which began when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022.

Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.

Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.

Fires have broken out in several districts in Kyiv as the Ukrainian capital was attacked with Russian drones, the advisor to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister has said.

Anton Gerashchenko said in a post on X on Saturday morning: “Kyiv is under a Russian drone attack this morning.

“Explosions heard in the city. Fires in several districts.”