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

South Korean foreign minister Cho Tae-yul said all possible scenarios were under consideration over the possibility of Seoul sending weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea’s aiding Russia.

Mr Cho, speaking through an interpreter, told a press conference in Ottawa that Seoul would be watching the level of participation by North Korean troops in Russia and what Pyongyang received from Moscow in return.

The United States said on Thursday that it expected North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region to enter the fight against Ukraine in the coming days. Washington says there are 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia.

South Korea has provided non-lethal aid to Ukraine, including mine clearance equipment, but so far has resisted Kyiv’s requests for weapons.

“All possible scenarios are under consideration,” Mr Cho said when asked whether Seoul might send arms to Ukraine.

“Specifically, we will be watching the level of the (North Korean) forces’ participation in the war, and what will be the quid pro quo that North Korea will be receiving from Russia. We will take all those (factors) into consideration before making specific decisions,” he said.

Russia is “surprised” that Turkey continues to supply Ukraine with weapons while trying to act as a mediator in the conflict between the two countries, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told the Hurriyet newspaper.

“Turkish weapons are used by the Ukrainian armed forces to kill Russian military personnel and civilians,” Mr Lavrov said in an interview.

“This situation cannot but cause surprise, given the Turkish government’s statements that it is ready to provide mediation services,” he said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukraine’s allies to stop “watching” and take action over the presence of North Korean troops in Russia before they start confronting his country in combat.

Mr Zelensky, in a video posted on Telegram, said North Korea had made progress in its military capability, missile deployment and weapons production and “now unfortunately they will learn modern warfare”.

“The first thousands of soldiers from North Korea are near the Ukrainian border. Ukrainians will be forced to defend themselves against them,” he said. “And the world will watch again.”

Mr Zelensky said Ukraine had pinpointed every location where North Korean soldiers were posted in Russia. But Kyiv’s Western allies, he said, had not supplied the long-range weapons needed to strike them.

“But instead of such necessary long-range capability, America watches, Britain watches, Germany watches…,” he said.

“Everyone in the world who truly wants the Russian war against Ukraine not to expand….must not just watch. They must act. Words about the inadmissibility of escalation and expansion of war must be matched with actions.”

The slick three-minute video interspersed his comments with images of North Korea’s soldiers and missile launches as well as images of the war and the United Nations.

The video follows an interview with South Korea’s KBS television on Thursday in which Mr Zelensky blasted what he described as his allies’ “zero” response to Russia’s deployment of North Korean troops.

South Korea is reportedly planning to send personnel to Ukraine to monitor North Korean troops, amid reports that Pyongyang has deployed some 10,000 soldiers to Russia.

South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh cited a senior presidential office official as saying on Wednesday that South Korea has a “legitimate need” to analyse North Korean military activities in the war in Ukraine and “feels the need” to establish a team to monitor North Korean troops and the battlefield situation.

Last week, South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted a government source as saying that South Korea was considering sending South Korean military personnel, likely from intelligence units, to Ukraine to monitor North Korean forces’ tactics and combat capabilities and to question captured North Koreans.

The North Korean foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, arrived in Russia on Friday and vowed to back Moscow in its war against Ukraine until it “achieves a great victory”.

In talks with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, she said North Korea had no doubt that Russia will succeed in Ukraine under Vladimir Putin’s “wise leadership”.

Russia will “achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to protect the sovereign rights and security interests”, she said.

Mr Lavrov acknowledged “very close contacts” have been established between Russian and North Korean militaries.

He said Moscow was “deeply grateful to our Korean friends for their principled position regarding the events that have now unfolded in Ukraine”.

He added that their ties “have reached an unprecedented high level over the past few years,” and proposed discussing the implementation of the strategic partnership agreement the two nations signed earlier this year.

Russia has claimed that Ukraine essentially sabotaged the process of exchanging prisoners of war.

Russia’s defence ministry offered Kyiv over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war but Ukraine only took 279, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed.

Ukraine did not immediately comment.

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.