Ukraine joins the North Atlantic Treaty. Or Ukraine goes nuclear. That’s the choice President Zelensky gave Donald Trump at their meeting last month at New York.
“In a conversation with Donald Trump, I said: ‘This is our situation,’” Mr. Zelensky told the European Council last week. “What way out do we have? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which for us will be a defense, or we’ll need to have some sort of alliance.”
The US has said for the first time that it has seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia, and South Korean lawmakers have said about 3,000 soldiers have been sent to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with more to follow.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, speaking in Rome, said it would be “very, very serious” if the North Koreans were preparing to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine, as Kyiv has alleged, though he said it remained to be seen what they would be doing there.
“There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” Austin told reporters, using North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Hermit kingdoms usually keep themselves to themselves, but now, North Korea is reinventing the moniker by which it has long been known. The country may have the world’s fourth largest military, numbering nearly 1.5 million – out of a population of 26 million – but when the first tanks invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, few observers would have anticipated North Korea’s actual involvement in the ensuing war. It is not only Ukrainian intelligence reports which, this week, raised the possibility that over 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Russia’s war effort. Only a few hours ago, South Korea’s intelligence agency has confirmed this grim reality – troops have now arrived.
Ukraine warned of a “huge” escalation risk on Saturday as hundreds of elite North Korean troops were predicted to enter the battlefield within days in support of Russia.
Around 10,000 of Pyongyang’s soldiers are preparing to join Moscow’s army, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and South Korean intelligence.
Video released on Friday showed North Korean troops arriving at Russian bases in the country’s far-east, picking up military equipment in long queues.
BRUSSELS (AP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his government has intelligence information that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading into the hostilities would turn the conflict into a “world war.”
When two white vapour trails cross the sky near the front line in eastern Ukraine, it tends to mean one thing. Russian jets are about to attack.
But what happened near the city of Kostyantynivka was unprecedented. The lower trail split in two and a new object quickly accelerated towards the other vapour trail until they crossed and a bright orange flash lit up the sky.
Was it, as many believed, a Russian war plane shooting down another in so-called friendly fire 20km (12 miles) from the front line, or a Ukrainian jet shooting down a Russian plane?
Ukrainian military recruitment officers raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who were not in compliance, media and witnesses reported Saturday.
Officers descended on Kyiv’s Palace of Sports venue after a concert Friday night by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy. Video footage aired by local media outlets appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. In the footage, officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men.
I’m a bit surprised the CBC ran this piece.
Ukrainian drones, targeting Russian military sites, are zeroing in on missiles and artillery stockpiles from North Korea, now Russia’s top arms supplier. At the same time, a Ukrainian missile killed six North Korean military officers and wounded three more last week in occupied Ukraine. These are believed to be the first soldiers sent by a foreign government to bolster Russia.
Six weeks ago, a South Korean Defense Intelligence Agency report said that North Korea has sent more than 13,000 shipping containers of arms to Russia over the previous two years. This is equivalent of 6 million 152-millimeter artillery shells. This was double an estimate of 6,700 containers given to reporters only six months earlier by South Korea’s defense minister, Shin Won-sik.
Just days before the Nord Stream gas pipeline attack in September 2022, warships belonging to the U.S. Navy were on the scene and ordered nearby officials to keep away.
That is according to John Anker Nielsen, who is harbour master at Christiansø, the easternmost part of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, northeast of the island of Bornholm and close to the sites of the Nord Stream explosions.
Vladimir Putin has demolished his favourite Black Sea holiday villa where regular Ukrainian drone attacks have made the area dangerous to visit.
Satellite images published by the Russian opposition website Proekt showed a gaping hole in the ground where Putin’s dacha near Sochi had once stood.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with former President Trump, though it led to nothing concrete, was a sensible move by both sides. In Zelensky’s case, it was an acknowledgement of the obvious fact that Trump may win in November, and it will then be desperately important for Zelensky to have some kind of working relationship with him. For Trump, the meeting was meant to protect him against allegations of being an ally of Putin, and also acknowledged the simple truth that if he is elected and wishes to promote an end to the war in Ukraine, he will have to deal with Zelensky.
It was billed as a decisive week for Ukraine.
A chance for President Volodymyr Zelensky to present his boldly named “victory plan” to America’s most powerful politicians, during a visit to the US.
But it’s unclear if Kyiv is any closer to getting any of the key asks on its wish list.
And Zelensky has antagonised senior Republicans, including Donald Trump.
Zelensky told the New Yorker magazine he believed Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”, while he described his vice-presidential running mate JD Vance as “too radical”.
The Speaker of the US House Mike Johnson has demanded that Ukraine fire its ambassador to Washington, as a feud between the Republican Party and Volodymyr Zelensky escalates.
Johnson’s intervention comes after President Zelensky visited an arms factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania – the hometown of President Joe Biden in a key swing state – with several top Democrats.
In a public letter, the top Republican said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.
President Zelensky is in the United States for his latest, possibly last, throw of the dice before the American election, in his attempt to prove that victory can be achieved against Ukraine’s Russian invaders.
The redoubtable leader of Ukraine has brought what he calls his ‘victory plan’, which embraces every facet of his nation’s future. It includes his strategy for forcing President Putin to end the war and for the West to guarantee his beleaguered country’s long-term security and economic prosperity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is bashing former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), attacking them in American media outlets and touring an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania Sunday — reportedly arriving there at the taxpayers’ expense on an Air Force jet.
