Ukraine-Russia war latest: ‘Captured’ North Korean soldier dies, says Seoul

Half a million were left without heating and one person was killed as Russia launched more than 70 missiles at Kharkiv.

Yet 2025 will almost certainly be the year when the war ends – and it will not be the unmitigated disaster for Ukraine that seemed likely even a few months ago.

Russian drones struck a multi-storey apartment building in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk, Ukraine, killing two people and injuring two.

Chasiv Yar has been under attack by Russian forces for many months in Donetsk region, the focus of Russia’s drive westward to capture the Donbas, which also includes Luhansk region.

The town lies west of Bakhmut, a regional centre which fell to Russian forces in May 2023 after months of heavy fighting.

Regional officials in Dnipropetrovsk region, further west, said a drone strike on the market in the town of Nikopol injured eight people on Thursday morning.

Seven of those injured were treated in hospital after the strike damaged stalls at the market, Dnipropetrovsk governor Serhiy Lysak said.

Nikopol, a frequent target of Russian attacks, lies on the opposite bank of a large reservoir from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Russia’s arms control point man cautioned Donald Trump’s incoming administration that Moscow was considering a whole range of possible steps on nuclear testing due to what it said was Trump’s radical position on the issue.

The Kommersant newspaper quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, as saying that Trump took a radical position on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) during his first term.

“The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying.

“So the optionality of our actions in the interests of ensuring security and the complex of possible measures and actions to realise this – and to send politically appropriate signals, in addition to what practitioners are considering – does not contain any exceptions.”

Romania’s radar systems detected a small flying object, likely a drone, breaching national airspace up to 6 km inland in the southeastern county of Tulcea, the defence ministry said.

The European Union and NATO state, which shares a 650 km (400 mile) border with Ukraine, has had Russian drone fragments fall on its territory repeatedly over the past year and a half as Moscow attacks Ukrainian port infrastructure.

The ministry said the radar first picked up the signal at 1904 GMT, 15 km east of Chilia Veche in Tulcea County.

It alerted the population of the county to take cover and began procedures to scramble fighter jets, but the radar lost the signal at 1909 GMT.

“There is no information about a possible target impact on national territory,” the ministry said.

Ukrainian air defence shot down 13 out of 24 Russian drones launched in an overnight attack, the air force has said.

The air force said the other 11 Russian drones were “lost” without causing damage. Military analysts said that Ukraine has increasingly been using electronic warfare to redirect or spoof Russian drones.

South Korea’s spy agency said that a North Korean soldier who was captured alive in Ukraine has died from his injuries, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Yonhap earlier on Friday reported that the agency had confirmed that a North Korean soldier dispatched to fight for Russia had been captured by Ukrainian forces.

South Korea’s spy agency said that a North Korean soldier who was captured alive in Ukraine has died from his injuries, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Yonhap earlier on Friday reported that the agency had confirmed that a North Korean soldier dispatched to fight for Russia had been captured by Ukrainian forces.

The flight had been set to travel to Grozny, the capital of Russia‘s Chechnya on Wednesday, but instead diverted and crash-landed a few kilometres short of Aktau airport in Kazakhstan.

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