Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged his allies to stop “watching” and take action before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield, and the country's army chief warned that his troops face to “one of the most powerful offensives” by Moscow since the total war began more than two years ago.
Zelenskyy raised the possibility of a pre-emptive Ukrainian attack on the camps where North Korean troops train and said kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine cannot do so without permission from its allies to use Western-made long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
“But instead… America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. “Everyone is waiting for the North Korean army to start attacking Ukrainians too,” Zelenskyy said in a post late Friday on the Telegram messaging app.
The Biden administration said Thursday that about 8,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia's Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine, and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight Ukrainian troops in the coming days.
On Saturday, Ukrainian military intelligence said more than 7,000 North Koreans equipped with Russian equipment and weapons had been transported to areas near Ukraine. The agency, known by its acronym GUR, said North Korean troops were being trained at five locations in Russia's Far East. He did not specify his source of information.
Western leaders have described the deployment of North Korean troops as a significant escalation that could also shake up relations in the Asia-Pacific region and open the door to technology transfers from Moscow to Pyongyang that could advance the threat posed by the weapons program. nuclear weapons and missiles from North Korea.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with her Russian counterpart in Moscow on Friday.
Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly said they need permission to use Western weapons to attack weapons depots, airfields and military bases far from the border to motivate Russia to seek peace. In response, US defense officials have argued that the missiles are limited in number and that Ukraine is already using its own long-range drones to hit targets deeper inside Russia.
Moscow has also consistently signaled that it would consider any such attack a major escalation. President Vladimir Putin warned on September 12 that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and NATO states if they approved them.
Ukraine faces “powerful” Russian offensive
Zelenskyy's call came shortly before Ukraine's top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskii, said Saturday that his troops are struggling to stop “one of the most powerful offensives” by Russia since its full invasion of its southern neighbor. in February 2022.
Writing on Telegram after a call with a senior Czech military officer, Syrskii suggested that Ukrainian units are suffering heavy losses in the fighting, which he said “requires a constant renewal of resources.”
While Syrskii did not specify where the intense fighting took place, Russia has been waging a fierce campaign along Ukraine's eastern front for months, gradually forcing kyiv to give ground. But Moscow has struggled to expel Ukrainian forces from its Kursk border region following an incursion almost three months ago.
Dozens injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine
Russian missiles hit Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, overnight Saturday, killing one police officer and wounding dozens, local governor Oleh Syniehubov said. According to Syniehubov and the Ukrainian national police, a missile hit a location where a large group of police officers had gathered, killing a 40-year-old soldier and wounding 36 others.
In Kherson province in southern Ukraine, Russian airstrikes killed a 40-year-old woman on Saturday and wounded three other people, including two children, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Another Kherson resident was injured in a drone strike earlier that day, according to local Ukrainian authorities.
Five more civilians, including two children, were injured after Russia attacked Ukraine's central Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak said.
In kyiv, air raid sirens sounded for more than five hours early Saturday as Russian drones fell on the capital, causing a fire in a downtown office block and injuring two people, according to the city's military administration.
In total, Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight with more than 70 Iranian-made Shahed drones, the Ukrainian air force reported Saturday. He said most were shot down or diverted off course by GPS jamming. Falling debris damaged power grids and residential buildings in several provinces and injured an elderly woman near kyiv, authorities said.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry hinted that Russia's drone campaign was slowing, saying Moscow launched just over half as many in October as the previous month.
Meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry reported that its forces shot down 24 Ukrainian drones overnight in four Russian regions and in occupied Crimea. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
