Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy says North Korea providing personnel to Russia’s army

Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused North Korea on Sunday of sending military personnel to Russia’s army and once again appealed for more support to prevent “a bigger war”. “We see an increasing alliance between Russia and regimes like in North Korea,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “It is no longer just about transferring weapons. It is actually about the transfer of people from North Korea to the occupier’s military forces.” He added: “It is obvious that under such conditions our relationship with our partners needs to evolve. The front line needs more support. We are talking about more long-range capabilities for Ukraine and more sustained supplies for our forces rather than a simple list of military hardware.” Last week, South Korea’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said “there was a high possibility” North Korea could deploy troops to help Russia in the war with Ukraine. Kim also told a parliamentary hearing that news reports of North Korean military officers having been killed in a Ukrainian strike on territory controlled by Russian forces were likely to be true.

Joe Biden will visit Germany this week, government sources in Berlin said. German media said the US president would meet the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for talks in Berlin on Friday expected to cover Ukraine and the Middle East. Biden’s visit was originally slated to last four days but Hurricane Milton forced it to be delayed, and causing Zelenskyy to embark on tour of European capitals to make the case for their enduring support.

Changes announced by Russia to its nuclear weapons policy were long overdue and will probably “cool the ardour” of its western enemies, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview released on Sunday. Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, said “hotheads” in the west had already heard the nuclear signals being sent by Moscow even before the Kremlin leader announced the changes last month. Putin said last month that Russia was extending the list of scenarios that could prompt it to consider launching a nuclear weapon. He said Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has urged international organisations to respond to a claim that several Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed in Russia’s Kursk region where Kyiv had launched an incursion in August. Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram that he sent letters to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the claim. Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState which is close to Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Russian troops shot and killed nine Ukrainian “drone operators and contractors” on 10 October after they had surrendered. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General’s Office said Russian troops had killed 16 captured Ukrainian soldiers in the partially occupied Donetsk region.

Russian glide bombs have struck a “concentration” of Ukrainian troops near the border of Russia’s western Kursk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. It said the attack was directed against “a strongpoint and concentration of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel”, and the bombs were delivered by a Russian Su-34 warplane. Ukraine caught Moscow by surprise on 6 August by bursting across the border into the Kursk region, in the first invasion of Russian sovereign territory since the second world war. Russia has been trying for more than two months to eject the Ukrainian forces.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that its forces had taken control of the village of Mykhailivka in eastern Ukraine, where they have been advancing towards the important logistics hub of Pokrovsk. The Ukrainian military said in its daily report that its troops repelled 36 Russian assaults in the Pokrovsk area, including near Mykhailivka.

Russia launched 68 drones and four missiles targeting Ukrainian territory overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday. Two Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck Poltava and Odesa regions and two Kh-59 guided air missiles targeted the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the air forces said on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed 31 of the drones, while 36 were unaccounted for, most likely intercepted by Ukraine’s electronic warfare, the air force said. The remaining drone was still in the air, it said.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones overnight over three regions bordering Ukraine, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday. Six drones each were downed over the Belgorod and Kursk region, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. One drone was destroyed over the Bryansk region.