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US officials have claimed that North Korea is suffering mass casualties on the front lines of Russia’s war against Ukraine, being used in costly “human wave” attacks.
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday that thousands of North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in the last week alone.
“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses,” Kirby said.
South Korea, Ukraine and the US previously accused Pyongyang of sending thousands of soldiers to help Russia fight off the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk border region.
It comes as Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
On the instructions of the Ukrainian intelligence officer, a Russian citizen had retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, equivalent to 1 1/2 kg of TNT and packed with ball bearings, was concealed in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.
Ukraine says it has destroyed a warehouse for the storage, maintenance and repair of “Shaheed” drones in the Russian region of Oryol
Ukraine’s general staff of the military said a Boxing Day operation successfully targeted a warehouse just north of the border region of Kursk.
“The operation significantly reduced the enemy’s potential to conduct airstrikes with strike UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure,” they wrote on Facebook.
The Independent was unable to verify this.
Tom Watling28 December 2024 11:21
Zelensky urges China to put pressure on North Korea over military aid to Russia
Volodymyr Zelensky has urged China to put pressure on North Korea if it “is sincere in its statements that the war should not expand.” In an address on Friday, 27 December, the Ukrainian president said North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are “suffering many losses.” “They are doing everything to make it impossible for us to capture Koreans – they are being killed by their own people… And the Russians send them to the frontlines so that they have minimal defence,” he added.
Tom Watling28 December 2024 10:44
Ukraine’s special operations forces say they have recovered the diary of a North Korean soldier killed while fighting in the Russian region of Kursk.
You can read one of the translated diary entries below.
Tom Watling28 December 2024 10:09
Tom Watling28 December 2024 09:41
Tom Watling28 December 2024 09:09
Footage released by Ukraine’s emergency services shows damage sustained in the southern city of Mykolaiv following a Russian drone attack.
Earlier, Ukraine’s Air Force said they had downed 15 Russian drones overnight, while a sixteenth was lost in the air. They added that Mykolaiv had been hit.
Tom Watling28 December 2024 08:45
Ukraine‘s Air Force says it has shut down more than a dozen drones launched across the country overnight.
In a statement on the Telegram Mesenger app, they wrote: “On the night of December 28, 2024 (from 11:00 p.m. on December 27), the enemy attacked with 16 Shahed attack UAVs and drones of other types (launch areas: Primorsko-Akhtarsk – Russia).”
They said all drones were either downed by electronic warfare or lost in the air. There were no casualties, though a company and apartment building in the city of Mykolaiv were partially damaged.
Tom Watling28 December 2024 08:20
Russia’s top security agency has arrested several suspects accused of involvement in an alleged Ukrainian plot to assassinate senior military officers, an announcement that follows the killing of a top Russian general last week.
The Federal Security Service, a top KGB successor known under its Russian acronym FSB, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that it had arrested four Russians accused of making preparations to kill senior defence ministry officials.
The FSB said that the suspected organisers of the attacks were planning to kill one of the senior officers using a remotely controlled car bomb.
It added that another top military official was to be assassinated by an explosive device hidden in an envelope. The agency didn’t name the military officers who were targeted in the alleged plot.
Arpan Rai28 December 2024 08:03
Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, has sent its first batch of food aid to Syria, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Zelensky said that 500 metric tons of wheat flour were already on their way to Syria as part of Ukraine‘s humanitarian “Grain from Ukraine“ initiative in cooperation with the United Nations World Food Programme.
“The wheat flour is planned to be distributed to 33,250 families or 167,000 people, in the coming weeks,” Zelensky said on X, adding: “Each package weighs 15 kilograms and can feed a family of five for one month.”
After the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, a close Russian ally, Ukraine has said it wants to restore relations with Syria.
Kyiv traditionally exports wheat and corn to countries in the Middle East, but not to Syria.
Jabed Ahmed28 December 2024 08:00
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency through the Telegram messaging platform.
On the instructions of the Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen had then retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, equivalent to one and a half kg of TNT and packed with ball bearings, was concealed in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.
The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was the target of the plot. Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency has not issued a comment on Russia’s claims.
Arpan Rai28 December 2024 07:58