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A major drone attack by Ukraine forced the closure of two Moscow airports this morning, with Russia saying it intercepted as many as 121 UAVs.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said early today that air defence units had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations around the Russian capital and air defence units southeast of the capital in the Kolomna and Ramenskoye districts had repelled one group of “enemy” drones, without specifying how many were involved.
The attack came as South Korea’s military said North Korea is preparing to send more troops to join Russia’s fight against Ukraine, despite Pyongyang suffering a high rate of losses among its existing deployment of 11,000 and seeing some of its soldiers captured.
At Davos on Thursday, Donald Trump issued some of his harshest criticism of Vladimir Putin yet for the ongoing war, and said he “really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon to get that war ended”.
Yet just hours later an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity was aired in which Mr Trump suggested the war only started because of Volodymyr Zelensky’s failure to preemptively capitulate before Russian troops began their invasion.
Around 1,000 North Koreans killed in Kursk fighting Ukraine, officials say
North Korea has suffered nearly 40 per cent casualties among its forces fighting alongside Russia in the western Kursk region, Western officials told the BBC.
Out of the estimated 11,000 troops sent from North Korea, 4,000 were battle casualties in just three months of fighting – including those killed, wounded, missing or captured – the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Of these 4,000 losses, nearly 1,000 are believed to have been killed by mid-January.
Ukrainian officials are yet to release their own tally. North Korea has not issued any comment on the presence of its troops inside Russia.
Andy Gregory24 January 2025 05:30
Russia says 121 Ukrainian drones downed overnight
Russia’s air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 121 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, its defence ministry said today.
The drones were downed over 13 Russian regions, including seven over Moscow and the nearby region, the ministry said in a statement.
Unofficial Russian Telegram channels reported a “large number” of drones over the Kursk region and posted videos of explosions.
Kursk mayor Igor Kutsak said the attack had damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one city district.
Arpan Rai24 January 2025 05:23
UK monitors Russian spy ship and steps up undersea cable protection
Britain said it monitored a Russian spy ship in the English Channel in recent days and would strengthen its response to secret operations by Russian ships and aircraft in an effort to protect undersea cables.
Defence minister John Healey said Yantar, a Russian spy vessel used for intelligence and mapping critical infrastructure on the sea floor, entered British waters on Monday and the Royal Navy tracked it for two days until it entered Dutch waters. Russia’s embassy in London did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
“We will not shy away from robust action to protect Britain,” Mr Healey said on Wednesday. “We are strengthening our response to ensure that Russian ships and aircraft cannot operate in secrecy near UK or Nato territory.”
Worries over the potential sabotage of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been growing after a string of outages in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Britain decided to send maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft to help Nato’s efforts to protect cables in the Baltic Sea, Sir John announced, adding that it would also deploy an advanced AI system to help safeguard undersea infrastructure.
Andy Gregory24 January 2025 05:00
Trump says Ukraine should have surrendered to Russia, blames Zelensky for war
President Donald Trump claimed in part two of a televised interview that the nearly three-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine that started when Moscow’s forces kicked off an invasion in 2022 was the fault of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s failure to preemptively capitulate before Russian troops began their attack.
Trump made the incendiary comments in a pre-taped interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired Thursday on Hannity’s program.
After Hannity asked about Trump’s threat to impose tariffs as a penalty on Russia if the Ukrainian war continues much longer, Trump responded that Zelensky “has had enough” and “wants to settle” with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Arpan Rai24 January 2025 04:46
North Korea suspected of preparing to send more troops to Russia, Seoul says
North Korea is preparing to send more troops to Russia to fight Ukrainian forces, despite suffering a high rate of losses and seeing some of its soldiers captured, South Korea’s military said.
“As four months have passed for the dispatch of troops for the Russia-Ukraine war, and multiple casualties and captives have occurred, (North Korea) is suspected to be accelerating follow-up measures and preparation for an additional dispatch of troops,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement today.
The JCS analysis did not specify what other follow-up measures Pyongyang might take.
North Korea is also preparing to launch a spy satellite and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), though there were no signs of immediate action on this front, the JCS said.
Pyongyang has deployed about 11,000 soldiers to support Moscow’s forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, according to Ukrainian and Western assessments. Ukraine seized Kursk in a surprise attack last year. More than 3,000 have been killed or wounded, according to Kyiv.
Arpan Rai24 January 2025 04:36
Ukrainian army deploys cat noises to lure Russians into explosive-laden traps, soldier claims
Ukrainians are using recordings of cat noises to lure Vladimir Putin’s forces into explosive-rigged traps, a Russian soldier has claimed.
Andy Gregory24 January 2025 04:30
Nato chief says stopping Putin will cost trillions if they don’t support Ukraine now
A Russian victory over Ukraine would greatly undermine the power of Nato and its credibility would cost trillions to restore, the alliance’s secretary general has warned.
Mark Rutte insisted that Ukraine‘s Western backers must not scale back the support they are providing to the country, almost three years after Vladimir Putin’s invasion began.
Nato has been increasing its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment. This is to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.
Arpan Rai24 January 2025 04:20
Trump says he has no desire to hurt Russia
Donald Trump urged Russian president Vladimir Putin to “settle now and stop this ridiculous war” in a post to his Truth Social site on Wednesday.
He said he had no desire to hurt Russia — which he noted had played a major role in securing victory for the Allies against Nazi Germany in the Second World War — and has a good relationship with Mr Putin, but warned of penalties if the war isn’t stopped soon.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump has been sceptical of the billions of dollars the Biden administration provided Ukraine in weapons and other materiel to defend itself. He has often spoken of his desire to end the war and said on the campaign trail that he could end the conflict within 24 hours of taking office. That has not happened.
Andy Gregory24 January 2025 04:00
Trump says he is not sure US should spend ‘anything’ on Nato
Donald Trump has said he was not sure the United States should be spending anything on Nato, telling reporters the US was protecting Nato members, but they were “not protecting us”.
“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” Mr Trump told reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office. “We’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.”
“They should up their 2 per cent to 5 per cent,” he said, repeating his remarks earlier to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. No Nato nation, including the US, is is currently spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence.
Washington finances 15.8 per cent of the 32-member military alliance’s yearly expenditure of around $3.5bn. That is the joint-largest share, alongside Germany’s, according to a Nato breakdown for 2024.
Arpan Rai24 January 2025 03:42
‘I didn’t know I would be fighting in Ukraine’ – captured North Korean soldier
A North Korean soldier captured by Ukraine has said he did not know who he would be fighting against or where he would fight.
In the recording of the interview, posted by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on X, the soldier says he arrived with Russia along with 100 fellow North Koreans on a ship, before being later transported by train.
The soldier, who had joined the army aged 17 as a conscript, said some of his compatriots were trained on heavy Russian military equipment – but that he did not go through this training.
“I didn’t know before coming to Russia that I would be fighting here, in Russia and I didn’t even know who we were fighting against,” the soldier told Ukrainian investigators.
“There were a lot of casualties when I was there alone, starting from the battle on Jan. 3. Overall, it’s hard to answer about such large-scale numbers.”
When asked what he knew about the world outside of North Korea, he said: “Not much.” Asked what he knows about South Korea, he said: “I only know that South Korea has fewer mountains than North Korea.”
Andy Gregory24 January 2025 03:30
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