Zelensky in Ukraine calls on allies to act before North Korean troops reach the front

Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged her allies to stop “observing” and take steps sooner North Korean troops deployed in Russia have reached the battlefield, with the country’s army chief warning that his soldiers face “one of the most powerful offensives” by Moscow since the start of all-out war more than two years ago.

Zelensky raised the prospect of a pre-emptive Ukrainian strike against the camps where North Korean troops are training and said that Kiev knows their location. But he said Ukraine could not do so without allies’ consent 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 too,” Zelensky wrote in a post published late Friday evening on the Telegram messaging app.

The Biden administration said as much on Thursday about 8,000 North Korean troops are currently in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, near the border with Ukraine and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days.

On Saturday, Ukrainian military intelligence reported that 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 soldiers were trained at five locations in the Russian Far East. She did not provide the source of her information.

Western leaders have described North Korea’s military deployment as a significant escalation it could also shake up relations in the Indo-Pacific region and open the door to technology transfers from Moscow to Pyongyang, which could increase the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met her Russian counterpart on Friday in Moscow.

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly said they need permission to use Western weapons to attack weapons depots, airports and military bases far from the border to motivate Russia to pursue peace. In response US defense officials they argued that the number of missiles was limited and that Ukraine was already using its own long-range drones to strike targets further inside Russia.

Moscow he also signaled consistently that it would consider any such strikes to be a serious escalation. President Vladimir Putin warned on September 12 that Russia would be at “war” with the US and NATO countries if they approved it.

Zelensky’s appeal came shortly before Ukraine’s top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrski, said Saturday that his troops were struggling to stop “one of the most powerful offensives” by Russia since its all-out invasion of its southern neighbor in February 2022.

Writing on Telegram after a conversation with a top Czech military official, Syrski suggested that Ukrainian units were suffering heavy losses in the fighting, which, in his opinion, “require constant renewal of resources.”

Although Syrski did not specify where heavy fighting is taking place, Russia has been waging a fierce campaign on the eastern front in Ukraine for months, gradually forcing Kiev to surrender. But Moscow tried hard to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk border region attack almost three months ago.

Russian rockets hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, on the night from Saturday to Saturday, killing a policeman and injuring dozens, local governor Oleh Sinehubov said. According to Syniehubov and the Ukrainian National Police, one shell hit the place where a large police group had gathered, killing a 40-year-old soldier and wounding 36 others.

In Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, Russian shelling on Saturday killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded three other people, including two children, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Another Kherson resident was injured in a drone attack later that day, according to local Ukrainian authorities.

Governor Sergei Lysak said five more civilians, including two children, were injured after Russia struck in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region.

According to the city’s military administration, air raid sirens in Kiev blared for more than five hours early Saturday morning when Russian drones fell on the capital, sparking a fire in a downtown office building and injuring two people.

In total, Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight using more than 70 Iranian Shahed drones, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday. Most were found to have been shot down or blown off course by GPS signal interference. Officials said falling debris damaged power grids and residential buildings in many provinces and injured an elderly woman near Kiev.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has suggested that Russia’s drone campaign is slowing, saying Moscow fired just over half the number in October compared to the previous month.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 24 Ukrainian drones overnight over four Russian regions and occupied Crimea. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

In a separate incident, four civilians were wounded by a Ukrainian strike in Russia’s southern Kursk region, Governor Alexei Smirnov said, without specifying what weapons were used. Moscow continues to try to push Ukrainian forces out of the province, months after they carried out a daring attack that shocked the Kremlin and was the biggest attack on Russia since World War II.

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