Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his allies to stop “monitoring” and take action before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield.
Zelensky raised the prospect of a Ukrainian pre-emptive strike on camps where North Korean troops train and said kyiv knew their locations. But he added that Ukraine could not do so without permission from its allies to use Western-made long-range weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
“But instead… America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean army to start attacking Ukrainians too,” Zelenskyy said in a message posted Friday evening on the messaging app Telegram.
The Biden administration said Thursday that some 8,000 North Korean soldiers are now in Russia’s Kursk region, near the Ukrainian border, and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against 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 sites in Russia’s Far East. He did not specify his source of information.
Western leaders have described the North Korean troop deployment as a significant escalation that could also upend relations in the Indo-Pacific region and open the door to technology transfers from Moscow to Pyongyang that could increase the threat posed by the program. of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles. .
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met her Russian counterpart in Moscow on Friday.
Oleg Petrasiuk/24th Ukrainian Mechanized Brigade via AP
Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly said they need permission to use Western weapons to strike arms depots, airfields and military bases far from the border to motivate Russia to seek peace. In response, U.S. defense officials argued that the number of missiles was limited and that Ukraine was already using its own long-range drones to strike targets further into Russia.
Moscow has also consistently indicated that it would consider such strikes a major escalation. President Vladimir Putin warned on September 12 that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and NATO countries if the latter approved them.
Russian missiles struck Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, overnight on Saturday, killing a police officer and injuring dozens, local governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. According to Syniehubov and the Ukrainian National Police, a missile hit a location where a large group of police officers were gathered, killing a 40-year-old serviceman and injuring 36 others.
In Kherson province, in southern Ukraine, Russian shelling killed a 40-year-old woman on Saturday and injured three others, including two children, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported.
In kyiv, air raid sirens blared for more than five hours Saturday morning as Russian drones rained down on the capital, starting a fire in a downtown office building and injuring two people, according to Kyiv’s military administration. the city.
Overall, Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight with more than 70 Iranian-made Shahed drones, the Ukrainian Air Force reported Saturday. Most were shot down or thrown off course by GPS jamming. Falling debris damaged power grids and residential buildings in several provinces and injured an elderly woman near kyiv, officials said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry suggested that Russia’s drone campaign was slowing, saying Moscow launched just over half of them in October compared to the previous month.