Ukraine-Russia war latest: North Korea soldiers ‘used as bait’ by Moscow’s forces as Trump-Putin call expected

German police have launched an investigation into suspected cases of Russian espionage after drones were spotted over several military installations in Bavaria, according to a statement on Monday.

Against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine, it could not be ruled out that German military installations and defence companies were being spied on by drones, Bavaria’s State Office of Criminal Investigation said.

The latest incident occurred late on Sunday when a drone was spotted over a military base near Manching, police said, referring to a vast facility where the German forces test new manned and unmanned aircraft.

Nato’s newest member Sweden will test new drone swarm technology developed by defence equipment group Saab and the Nordic country’s armed forces, defence minister Pal Jonson said.

Mr Jonson said the army would test the technology, which was developed over the past year, during the upcoming Arctic Strike exercise.

“We will need to take some risks to build a stronger defence capability faster than we normally do,” Mr Jonson said.

He added that the technology allows swarms of drones of different sizes to form and then solve tasks autonomously.

“With these drone swarms it is possible to conduct both reconnaissance, positioning and identification,” he said.

Hundreds of North Korean troops have been killed fighting against Ukraine over the last few months, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea said 300 of Pyongyang’s troops have been killed and another 2,700 wounded since joining Vladimir Putin’s forces last year.

Kim Jong Un has sent at least 11,000 soldiers to Russia since October to help the Russian military fight off Kyiv’s cross-border incursion into Kursk which began in August.

The “massive casualties” of North Korean soldiers was due to their “lack of understanding of modern warfare” and “useless” tactic of shooting at long-range drones, the NIS said.

North Korean soldiers are being used as bait by Russian troops to lure out Ukrainian drones on the battlefield, a diary has revealed.

The last written notes of a North Korean soldier described how Pyongyang’s troops are ordered to stand within seven metres of Kyiv’s drones as covering soldiers try to shoot them down.

On one notebook page, a crude drawing shows a stickman soldier breaking cover to attract the attention of a drone, while his two comrades lie in wait to shoot it down.

“When the bait stands still, the drone will stop and it will be shot down,” the soldier wrote in scrawled handwriting, translated by The Wall Street Journal.

Russia said on Monday it had downed nine Ukrainian drones that tried to attack part of the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline, through which Russian gas flows to Turkey and Europe.

The Russian defence ministry said the attack was aimed against a compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, but the facility was working normally and there were no casualties.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

TurkStream and Blue Stream, which run under the Black Sea to Turkey, are Russia’s last routes for supplying pipeline gas to Europe, after Ukraine at the start of the year refused to renew a five-year transit deal that had allowed Russia to keep pumping gas across its territory despite the war between the two neighbours.

The Russian statement said falling fragments from one drone had caused minor damage to the building and equipment of a gas metering station at the compressor, but emergency teams had quickly repaired it.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are expected to speak in the coming days or weeks, a top Trump adviser said.

Mr Trump, who will return as US president next week, styles himself as a master dealmaker and has vowed to swiftly end the war in Ukraine but not set out how he might achieve that.

Answering a question about contacts between Mr Trump and Mr Putin, US Congressman Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, said: “I do expect a call for, at least in the coming days and weeks. So, that would be a step and we’ll take it from there.” He, however, said it was unrealistic to aim to expel Russian soldiers from every inch of Ukrainian territory.

He added that the war had become a World War One-style “meat grinder of people and resources” with “World War Three consequences”, according to ABC.

“Everybody knows that this has to end somehow diplomatically,” Mr Waltz, a Trump loyalist who also served in the National Guard as a colonel, told ABC.

“I just don’t think it’s realistic to say we’re going to expel every Russian from every inch of Ukrainian soil, even Crimea. President Trump has acknowledged that reality, and I think it’s been a huge step forward that the entire world is acknowledging that reality. Now let’s move forward.”