BURSTUkrainian leader says presence of forces ‘could contribute to stabilising the path to peace’
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had held a new discussion with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on the latter’s proposal to deploy troops in Ukraine as a means to help achieve a stable peace.
At least 100 North Koreans deployed to support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine have been killed since entering combat in December, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun told reporters on Thursday. Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to reinforce the Russian military, including to the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces seized territory earlier this year. “In December, they [North Korean troops] engaged in actual combat, during which at least 100 fatalities occurred,” Lee said, speaking after a briefing by South Korea’s spy agency. “The National Intelligence Service also reported that the number of injured is expected to reach nearly 1,000.” Despite those losses, the agency also said it had detected signs North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was preparing to train a new special operations force to ship westward.
Ukraine struck Russian territory with at least 13 missiles and 84 drones, triggering a fire at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in the southern Rostov region that burned for hours, Russian officials said on Thursday. Russian air defences shot down 84 drones over Russian regions, including 36 over Rostov region, according to the defence ministry.
A Russian missile attack damaged residential buildings and infrastructure in Ukraine’s Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions, the Ukrainian military said this morning. There were no immediate reports of causalities. Russia used two Iskander-M ballistic missiles and a Kh-59/69 guided missile in its attack, the air force said. The attack damaged infrastructure, two apartment buildings, a hospital, and a school in Dnipropetrovsk region, its governor Serhiy Lysak said. A missile attack on the northeastern Sumy region damaged nine private residences, regional authorities said.
Britain has unveiled £225m (US$286m) in new military aid to Ukraine for next year including drones, boats and air defence systems.
The World Bank has approved $2.05bn in funding for Ukraine that includes the first grant from a $20bn US loan fund for Kyiv that is backed by income from frozen Russian sovereign assets.
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