Ukraine Russia war: North Koreans in Putin’s ‘meat grinder’ military target, US says

Russia’s torture of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war is a crime against humanity, UN-backed human rights experts said yesterday.

Erik Mose, chair of the independent commission investigating human rights violations in Ukraine, told reporters that the panel previously described Russia’s widespread and systematic use of torture in Ukraine and Russia against civilians and prisoners, both men and women, as a war crime.

“Our recent findings demonstrate that Russian authorities have committed torture in all provinces of Ukraine that came under their control, as well as in the detention facilities that the commission has investigated in the Russian Federation,” he said.

Mose said the commission is an investigative body. He noted that Ukraine‘s prosecutor general and the International Criminal Court are investigating possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine and the commission may be asked for evidence.

The commissioners examined reports from 41 different detention centers, from makeshift centers to well-established facilities, in nine occupied regions of Ukraine and eight areas in Russia, Mose said.

He said the commission identified further evidence that violent practices common in Russian detention facilities were also practiced in similar facilities in Russian-occupied areas in eastern Ukraine, he said.

The commission also found additional evidence of the recurrent use of sexual violence as a form of torture, Mose said.

Detainees were subjected to rape, long periods of forced nudity, body searches and more, commission member Vrinda Gover said. She said most prisoners of war reported being subjected to sexual violence and suffering long-lasting psychological trauma.

Russia has claimed Britain is using a Black Sea grain corridor to deliver arms to Ukraine, after denying London’s allegations that Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports had disrupted crucial grain supplies for other countries.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that an increase in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was delaying vital aid reaching the Palestinians and stopping crucial grain supplies from being delivered to the global south.

The United Nations said last week that Russian attacks on Ukrainian Black Sea ports had damaged six civilian vessels as well as grain infrastructure since 1 September, calling the ramp-up in strikes “distressing”.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Starmer’s allegations that Moscow was damaging global food security with such strikes were wide of the mark.

“Such baseless yet thunderous outrage from London once again confirms just the opposite: the direct involvement of the UK in supplying arms to the Kiev regime using the Black Sea sea corridor,” she alleged in a press briefing.

Zakharova referred to what she said was recent video evidence concerning the port of Yuzhny, in Ukraine’s Odesa region, and purported arms supplies published by Russia’s Ministry of Defence.

Her claims could not be independently verified and there was no immediate response to them from London.

Vladimir Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine is reckless and self-harming, a top UK official has told the UN Security Council.

Fergus Eckersley, UK minister counsellor, briefed a UNSC meeting on threats to international peace and security yesterday, where he said Russia’s domestic interests are severely harmed by Mr Putin’s invasion.

“It is clear where president Putin’s priorities lie: defence and national security will consume over 40 per cent of Russia’s entire federal spending next year – a post-Soviet record high, exceeding expenditure on healthcare, education, and the environment combined,” Mr Eckersley said.

He went on: “Let me repeat that: the Russian government is spending more on killing Ukrainians and trying to steal their land than it is on the health and education of its own people, and the environmental protection of its own territory, all put together. It is reckless and it is self-harming.”

The Russian invasion has “fuelled inflation, forced interest rates up to a 20-year high, and increased dramatically the cost of government, corporate and household borrowing,” he said.

The US and South Korea have turned to China to use its influence over Russia and North Korea to prevent escalation after Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to Russia to aid Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Beijing has so far stayed quiet.

In a rare meeting earlier this week, three top US diplomats met with China’s ambassador to the United States to emphasise US concerns and urge China to use its sway with North Korea to try to curtail the cooperation, according to a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Secretary of state Antony Blinken said yesterday that the sides had “a robust conversation just this week” and that China knows US expectations are that “they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities.”

“But I think this is a demand signal that’s coming not just from us, but from countries around the world,” he said at a news conference in Washington with defence secretary Lloyd Austin and their South Korean counterparts.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement that China’s position on the Ukraine crisis is “consistent and clear.”

Russia has been training North Korean soldiers in artillery, drones and “basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in front line operations,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken said.

North Korea’s efforts to tighten its relationship with Russia has raised concerns around the world about how that may expand the war in Ukraine and what Russian military aid will be delivered in exchange.

It’s become a key topic as US and South Korean leaders met this week in Washington, fuelling concerns that the presence of those soldiers will further destabilise the Asia-Pacific region and broaden Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Ukraine believes around 12,000 North Korean soldiers are already involved in Russia’s war on the country which is going to clock 1,000 days soon.

Ukraine, alongside South Korea, were the first officials to alarm against North Korea’s soldiers entering the war from Russian side.

The US officials said they estimate there are about 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia. Seoul and its allies assess that the number has increased to 11,000.

Reports of North Korean troops arriving in Russia’s Kursk region to help Russian troops fight off a Ukrainian border incursion began more than a week ago. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters that North Korean officers and technical personnel have already been spotted in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. “I believe they sent officers first to assess the situation before deploying troops,” Mr Zelensky said. He has cautioned that the participation of a third country could escalate the conflict into a world war.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said some North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region. The Russian forces are facing difficulty in pushing back Ukraine’s cross-border incursion launched on 6 August.

This came within hours of Nato secretary general Mark Rutte confirming recent Ukrainian intelligence reports of the presence of North Korean military units deployed to Kursk near the Ukrainian border.

Russian troops attacked a strategic bridge across the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Estuary in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight, launching two ballistic Iskander missiles and eight guided missiles, said the Ukrainian military on Thursday.

The bridge has been a target several times over the past two years, and is an important railway and car connection in the region.

The Ukrainian military added that Russia used two ballistic missiles to attack the eastern town of Kramatorsk.

The air force shot down 17 out of 43 drones and two guided missiles launched by Russia overnight, it said, adding that 23 drones were “locationally lost”, likely due to electronic warfare and three more left Ukraine-controlled airspace.

All drones threatening the capital Kyiv were disabled by air defence.

A Russian court has fined Google $2.5 decillion for allegedly blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda on YouTube.

The fine, which is the equivalent of $2.5 trillion trillion trillion, is the result of four years of accumulated fines, with the figure currently doubling every week under Russian law.

The original penalty of 100,000 rubles was handed to the US tech giant in 2020 after the media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits related to restrictions on their YouTube channels.

Anthony Cuthbertson reports: