Ukraine-Russia war: Putin bombs Kharkiv as UN ‘concerned’ by North Korean troops

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky urged its allies to stop “watching” and take steps before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield.

Mr Zelensky raised the prospect of a preemptive Ukrainian strike on camps where the North Korean troops are being trained, and said Kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine can’t do it without permission from allies to use Western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.

“But instead … America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start attacking Ukrainians as well,” Mr Zelensky said.

Debris from destroyed Russian drones sparked park and grass fires in Kyiv, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said today, in what was Moscow’s third drone attack on the city in as many nights.

“Emergency crews have been dispatched,” mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

The drone wreckage caused a fire in Muromets park in the Desnianskyi district in Kyiv’s northeast and set some grass ablaze on the embankment of the Dnipro River across from the park.

Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s second-largest city and the surrounding region, injuring at least five people, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Mr Syniehubov said a Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, near the city centre.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the supermarket was located next to residences. An earlier strike had hit a forested area of the city, he said.

A Russian air attack on Kyiv damaged buildings, roads and several power lines in the city, the capital’s military administration said early on Sunday, after the military said air defences were trying to repel a drone attack.

There were no injuries in the attack, which came in waves and approached the city from different directions, Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Popko said there was no fire, amending the administration’s earlier account that emergency crews had been dispatched to the site of a fire in the Shevchenkivskyi district that it said had been caused by the attack.

It was Russia’s second drone attack on Kyiv in as many nights. According to preliminary information, all of the attack drones were destroyed, Popko added. It was not immediately clear how many drones were launched at Kyiv.

Falling drone debris damaged an entrance and windows of at least five buildings in the Shevchenkivskyi and Holosiivskyi districts, including a hostel and windows in an office building, Popko said.

The military posted several photos on Telegram showing a blown-out entrance to a building, damaged windows in another and power lines lying on the road.

Reuters witnesses reported hearing blasts and seeing plumes of smoke rising from above residential buildings.

Shevchenkivskyi district near Kyiv’s centre is a busy area with a cluster of universities, restaurants and tourist attractions. Holosiivskyi district is home to a large national park. Both districts lie on the western bank of the Dnipro River.

Kyiv, its surrounding region and the vast majority of the eastern half of Ukraine were intermittently under air raid alerts for most of the night, according to alerts issued on social media by the Ukrainian military.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged its allies to stop “watching” and take steps before North Koreans troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield.

Zelenskyy raised the prospect of a preemptive Ukrainian strike on camps where the North Korean troops are being trained, and said Kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine can’t do it without permission from allies to use Western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.

“But instead … America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start attacking Ukrainians as well,” Zelenskyy said in a post late Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

A US citizen who was spirited out of eastern Ukraine by Russian special forces after helping the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops said in Moscow on Saturday he had asked for Russian citizenship.

“My name is Daniel Martindale,” he told a press conference, state media reported.

“Here is my passport. It went through the war with me, you can see in what condition it is,” he said in English, holding up what appeared to be a well-used US passport and birth certificate.

He said he was under no duress, wanted to receive Russian citizenship and predicted Russia would win the war in Ukraine.

The US embassy in Moscow did not immediately comment.

Mr Martindale, who said he had worked as a missionary, said he entered Ukraine from Poland in early 2022, just days before president Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine.

“I’ve wanted to go to Russia for a long time, I realized that this is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” he was quoted as saying.

An unidentified Russian intelligence source quoted by the RIA state news agency said Mr Martindale had supplied information to Russian forces about the location of key Ukrainian infrastructure for two years.

Moldovans are casting votes in a decisive presidential runoff Sunday that pits pro-Western incumbent Maia Sandu against a Russia-friendly opponent, as ongoing claims of voter fraud and intimidation threaten democracy in the European Union candidate country.

In the first round held Oct. 20, Sandu obtained 42% of the ballot but failed to win an outright majority. She will face Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general, who outperformed polls in the first round with almost 26% of the vote. Polls opened Sunday at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and will close at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT).

A poll released by research company iData indicates a tight race that leans toward a narrow Sandu victory, an outcome that might rely on Moldova’s large diaspora. The presidential role carries significant powers in areas such as foreign policy and national security and has a four-year term.

The United States flew a long-range bomber in a trilateral drill with South Korea and Japan on Sunday in response to North Korea’s recent test-firing of a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the US mainland, South Korea’s military said.

North Korea on Thursday tested the newly developed Hwasong-19 ICBM, which flew higher and stayed in the air longer than any other missile it has fired. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it “an appropriate military action” to cope with external security threats posed by its rivals.

It comes as North Korean troops fight on the Ukrainian front line.

Ukrainian forces are restraining Russia’s one of most powerful offensives since the start of full-scale invasion as analysts say war has entered the “most dangerous” phase.

Russian troops advanced in September at their fastest rate since March 2022, the month after president Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, according to open-source data. Ukraine in August took part of Russia’s Kursk region.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion,” general Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv early in the war and win a decisive victory, Mr Putin scaled back his war ambitions to take the Donbas industrial heartland in Ukraine‘s east, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Donbas has since become the war’s main theatre, where some of the biggest battles in Europe for generations have taken place and where thousands of troops on each side have died.

On Saturday, Moscow said it had taken two more settlements along the Donbas frontline.

In the week of 20-27 October alone, Russia captured nearly 200 square km (80 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, according to the Russian media group Agentstvo, which analysed Ukrainian open-source maps.

The war is entering what Russian analysts say is its most dangerous phase as Moscow’s forces advance, North Korea sends troops to Russia and the West ponders how the conflict will end.

Large North Korean troop casualties in Ukraine or Russia would be a major political blow for the country’s 40-year-old ruler, Kim Jong Un.

But experts say Mr Kim may see this as a way to get much needed foreign currency and security support from Russia in return for joining the war.

“Kim Jong Un is taking a big gamble. If there are no large casualty numbers, he will get what he wants to some extent. But things will change a lot if many of his soldiers die in battle,” Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army first lieutenant who leads the World Institute for North Korean Studies, told the Associated Press.