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Ukrainian military officials say that North Korean ballistic missiles fired by Russian forces have become far more precise
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The first French Mirage 2000 fighter jets has arrived in Ukraine to help Kyiv’s fight against Vladimir Putin’s forces – as Russia’s aerial assault continues.
French armed forces minister Sebastien Lecornu announced the jets arrived in Ukraine on Thursday morning.
“With Ukrainian pilots on board who have been trained for several months in France, they will now participate in defending the skies of Ukraine,” he wrote, without mentioning the number of planes. Ukraine has also received F-16 jets from a number of other European countries.
It comes as senior Ukrainian military officials have warned that North Korean ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine by Russian forces have become far more precise over time.
Russia’s invading forces have been using imported North Korean projectiles since the end of 2023, and their accuracy and performance has changed drastically since then, military sources told Reuters.
All the more than 20 ballistic missiles that hit Ukraine over the past several weeks landed within 50 metres to 100m of their intended target, the sources said.
This is not only helping Russia in its war effort but also improving North Korea‘s military capabilities, they warned.
In the final part of our series on the plight of people with disabilities caught up in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bel Trew speaks to a man who had only the use of one limb, his arm, about the terrible treatment Ukrainians are subjected to in Russian-occupied territory. He was returned to Kyiv and his family, but would later die
All remaining transmission lines between them and Russia and Belarus and will be switched off one by one
Russia said on Thursday that it had withdrawn accreditation from French paper Le Monde’s Moscow correspondent Benjamin Quenelle due to Paris’s refusal to issue a visa to a Russian reporter, leaving the paper without a presence in Moscow for the first time since the 1950s.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would retaliate over France’s refusal to accredit a journalist from Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
She said Quenelle had been the casualty not because of any “political sub-text” but because his accreditation had required a “technical extension”.
Le Monde criticised what it said was the “covert expulsion of our journalist”.
“For the first time since 1957, Le Monde is prevented from having a correspondent based in Moscow,” Jerome Fenoglio, its director, wrote in an article in the paper.
“Le Monde condemns this disguised expulsion of our journalist, who has spent more than 20 years in Russia without interruption,” Fenoglio said.
‘I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine,’ said the Zoolander star
The Kremlin on Thursday removed the head of Russia’s space agency after a tenure of less than three years that was scarred by the spectacular failure of Russia’s first mission to the moon in 47 years.
In a statement, the Kremlin said Yuri Borisov, who had headed Roscosmos since July 2022, had been relieved of his post. It did not state a reason.
He was replaced by deputy transport minister Dmitry Bakanov, who before joining the government had been in charge of a satellite company.
Ever since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go into space in 1961, Russia has prided itself as a leading power in space exploration. But its ambitions suffered a massive blow in August 2023 when its uncrewed Luna-25 mission smashed into the surface of the moon while attempting to land.
Borisov, despite that failure, had laid out ambitious plans for the coming years as Russia prepares to launch its own orbital space station. The new project will replace the ageing International Space Station (ISS) where Russia has collaborated closely with the United States even after relations were plunged into crisis because of the war in Ukraine.
Last year Borisov approved a schedule under which the first two modules of the new Russian station would launch in 2027. Russia has said it plans to maintain a continuous crewed presence in space and conduct scientific, economic and security-related projects that were not possible in the Russian segment of the ISS.
The first batch of French Mirage 2000 fighter jets has arrived in Ukraine half a year after president Emmanuel Macron announced the plan to send them.
French armed forces minister Sebastien Lecornu announced the jets arrived in Ukraine this morning.
“With Ukrainian pilots on board who have been trained for several months in France, they will now participate in defending the skies of Ukraine,” he wrote.
Last December, a group of Ukrainian pilots finished a six-month training programme to operate the Mirage 2000s at a base in Nancy, north-west France.
The French, meanwhile, tweaked the jets to make them more suitable for war in Ukraine. The jets were designed to focus on air-to-air combat but Mr Lecornu said they had to be modified to be more focused on air-to-ground warfare. Their electronic warfare systems were also reinforced.
A shopping centre in Ukraine’s second-largest city has been destroyed following a Russian drone attack overnight.
Local officials said the Barabashovo market in northeast Ukraine’s Kharkiv, home to around 1.2 million people, was hit by the debris of a downed Russian drone.
Governor Oleh Syniehubov said roughly 100 kiosks had been destroyed. No casualties were reported.
It is at least the third time Russian aerial attacks have hit the market. In March 2022, as Russian forces began occupying Kharkiv (it was liberated in September that year), a double-tap strike on the market killed one emergency worker and injured a second.
In July, as Ukraine was preparing Kharkiv’s liberation, a Russian cluster munition attack killed two men and wounded 21 more.
Swarms of Iranian-made Russian Shahed unmanned drones target Ukraine almost every night – it is up to these men and their World War Two-style machine guns to shoot the UAVs out of the sky. World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley reports from the Kyiv region
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