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South Korea, Ukraine and the US previously accused Pyongyang of sending thousands of soldiers to help Russia
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Russia has warned it “rules out nothing” regarding nuclear testing in response to Donald Trump’s “radical” position on the issue during his first term as president.
Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, warned the United States that its nuclear arsenal is intended to “sober up” countries on the “brink of direct armed conflict” with Russia.
Mr Ryabkov told the Kommersant newspaper: “The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today.
“So the optionality of our actions in the interests of ensuring security and the complex of possible measures and actions to realise this – and to send politically appropriate signals, in addition to what practitioners are considering – does not rule anything out.”
It comes as an injured North Korean soldier captured by Ukrainian forces died, Yonhap News Agency has reported, citing a statement from South Korea’s spy agency.
South Korea, Ukraine and the US previously accused Pyongyang of sending thousands of soldiers to help Russia fight off the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk border region.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said that an Azerbaijan Airlines plane which crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday had decided to reroute from its original destination in Chechnya amid dense fog and a local alert over Ukrainian drones.
Rosaviatsia, the wathdog, said that the captain of the plane had been offered other airports at which to land, but had chosen Kazakhstan’s Aktau. It said that it would provide comprehensive support to Kazakh and Azerbaijani investigations looking into the crash.
Russia has said it’s important to wait for an investigation to finish its work to understand what happened. Four Azerbaijani sources told Reuters on Thursday the plane had been struck by Russian air defences.
Ministers warned the US that its nuclear arsenal is intended to ‘sober up’ countries on the ‘brink of direct armed conflict’ with Russia
Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, has sent its first batch of food aid to Syria, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.
Zelensky said that 500 metric tons of wheat flour were already on their way to Syria as part of Ukraine‘s humanitarian “Grain from Ukraine“ initiative in cooperation with the United Nations World Food Programme.
“The wheat flour is planned to be distributed to 33,250 families or 167,000 people, in the coming weeks,” Zelensky said on X, adding: “Each package weighs 15 kilograms and can feed a family of five for one month.”
After the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, a close Russian ally, Ukraine has said it wants to restore relations with Syria.
Kyiv traditionally exports wheat and corn to countries in the Middle East, but not to Syria.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had taken control of two eastern Ukrainian villages, Ivanivka in the Donetsk region, and Zahryzove in the Kharkiv region, the RIA state news agency reported.
RIA also cited the ministry as saying it had downed four British-made Storm Shadow missiles in the past week.
These claims could not be independently verified.
Key questions and answers about the first fatal crash anywhere in the world involving a passenger jet in 2024
The Kremlin has said that Finland’s boarding of a ship carrying Russian oil on suspicion the vessel caused an outage of the Estlink 2 undersea power cable was not a matter for it.
Estonia’s armed forces have launched a naval operation to protect the parallel Estlink 1 undersea power cable in the Baltic Sea in response to the damage, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on Friday.
When asked about Finland’s actions Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I can’t say anything precise here, this is a very narrow-profile issue which is hardly the prerogative of the (Russian) presidential administration.”
Estonia’s armed forces have launched a naval operation to protect the Estlink 1 undersea power cable in the Baltic Sea in response to the damage this week of a parallel electricity line, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has said.
On Thursday, Finland seized a ship carrying Russian oil on suspicion the vessel caused an outage of the Estlink 2 undersea power cable which, like Estlink 1, connects Finland and Estonia, and that it also damaged four internet lines.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunction and accidents.
Damage to subsea installations in the region has now become so frequent that it is difficult to believe this was caused merely by accident or poor seamanship, Tsahkna said on Thursday.
Finnish investigators believe the seized ship – the Cook Island-registered ship, named as the Eagle S – may have caused the damage by dragging its anchor along the seabed, one of several such incidents in recent years.
Ukraine is facing an array of issues heading into 2025, underscored by the anxiety of what the re-election of Donald Trump could mean for the country’s future. Tom Watling speaks to politicians, military experts and aid workers to discover what next year could look like
Ukraine is facing an array of issues heading into 2025, underscored by the anxiety of what the re-election of Donald Trump could mean for the country’s future. Tom Watling speaks to politicians, military experts and aid workers to discover what next year could look like
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