Ukraine war latest: Zelensky appeals to Nato ‘sceptics’ for membership bid

Ukraine’s air force has warned that Russia was using thermal and radar decoys to trick Ukrainian air defences, and putting electronic warfare devices on its missiles.

“All this significantly complicates the operation of Soviet-made anti-aircraft missile systems. Western systems work much more effectively in such conditions, but Ukraine does not have enough to reliably cover hundreds of critical infrastructure facilities,” the air force said.

It said foggy weather conditions also made it harder for machine gunners to spot drones, as Russia launched a large-scale attack this week on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

European Council president Antonio Costa and Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, arrived in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv yesterday, using the first day in their new roles to send a message of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Their visit comes as Ukraine struggles to fend off a grinding Russian offensive and faces the uncertainty of US policy toward Kyiv when Donald Trump takes office next month.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said North Korean soldiers deployed by Russia will be used as “cannon fodder”.

Many North Korean soldiers will be sent to the frontlines of the war in the future, Mr Zelensky told Kyodo News and he said that it was “indisputable” that Russian president Vladimir Putin will use them “as cannon fodder” to reduce losses to his country’s military.

Mr Zelensky said there is evidence that about 12,000 North Korean soldiers had been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region bordering Ukraine but Kyiv needs “to have proof” before disclosing the exact number of casualties.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions overnight, the state-run RIA news agency reported this morning, citing the defence ministry.

Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter is an occasional DJ who has lived in Paris under a pseudonym, according to reports.

While the Russian president officially has two daughters with his ex-wife, who has remarried as Lyudmila Ocheretnaya after she and Putin were divorced in 2014, he is also alleged to have had a daughter with a woman named Svetlana Krivonogikh.

Her daughter Elizaveta has now been reported in Ukrainian media to haved lived in Paris under the name Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova, and to have studied at the ICART international school of art management.

You can read more details here:

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has accused China of providing Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine and threatening peace in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

“Instead of taking responsibility for peace and security in the world as a permanent member of the UN security council, China is opposing our core European interests with its economic and weapons aid to Russia,” Ms Baerbock said in a statement ahead of a visit to Beijing.

The German foreign minister will travel to China next week, where she will meet with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to discuss issues including the war in Ukraine. “Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine is a direct threat to our peace,” Ms Baerbock said. “I will also speak in Beijing about the fact that we cannot simply ignore this in our relations with China.”

She noted that the war in Ukraine shows how security in Europe is inextricably linked with that in Asia.

“If North Korea sends soldiers and weapons against Ukraine, while Russia supports Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, then this jeopardises peace both here and in the Indo-Pacific,” Ms Baerbock said.

Explosions were heard across the country as damage to the energy and other critical infrastructure was reported by officials in cities in the west, south and centre of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia used cruise missiles with cluster munitions in Thursday’s attack, calling it a “vile escalation”.

In this article, The Independent takes a look at why Russia is launching so many strikes and the likely impact of them on Ukraine.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces had gained control over two settlements, Illinka and Petrivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

It also said that Russian air defences shot down 55 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours.

Russian forces hold a little less than 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory and have advanced through Donetsk region over the past two months at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data.

They are approaching Kurakhove and the town of Pokrovsk to the north, the site of the sole colliery that supplies Ukraine’s steel industry with coking coal.

In a significant development on the route to a potential ceasefire after 33 months of conflict, the Ukrainian president indicated for the first time that Kyiv could accept Russian control over some of its territory in order to end the “hot phase of the war”.

With Moscow appearing to ramp up its push for territory in Ukraine’s east ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, Mr Zelensky told Sky News that peace could be struck if territory he controls is taken “under the Nato umbrella”, allowing him to negotiate the return of the rest later “in a diplomatic way”.

The US is not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons it gave up after the Soviet Union collapsed, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said yesterday.

Mr Sullivan made his remarks when questioned about a New York Times article last month that said some unidentified Western officials had suggested president Joe Biden could give Ukraine the arms before he leaves office.

“That is not under consideration, no. What we are doing is surging various conventional capacities to Ukraine so that they can effectively defend themselves and take the fight to the Russians, not (giving them) nuclear capability,” he told ABC.

Last week, Russia said the idea was “absolute insanity” and that preventing such a scenario was one of the reasons why Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

Kyiv inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its 1991 collapse but gave them up under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the United States and Britain.