According to Ukraine, North Korean troops stationed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and have been left unprotected by the Russian forces with whom they are fighting.While the US says Russian and North Korean generals consider the troops “expendable”. Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Russian soldiers were sending North Koreans into battle with minimal protection and were taking extreme measures to avoid becoming North Korean prisoners. “Their loss is significant, very significant,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address. “We see that neither the Russian military nor their North Korean supervisors have any interest in ensuring the survival of these North Koreans.” Zelensky said “several” wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukrainian forces. In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said troops sent by Pyongyang were killing themselves rather than risk being captured. He said that a “humanitarian wave” of North Korean soldiers was being sent to their deaths in “desperate” attacks by generals who saw them as expendable, estimating that more than 1,000 had been killed in Pyongyang in the past week. More people were killed or injured, which confirms similar figures reported by South Korea.
Biden administration promises to approve new military aid to Ukraine, including critical air defense systemsKirby said the promised U.S. security assistance package was expected to be announced “in the next few days,” though it was unclear how much it would include. The increase in aid comes just weeks after the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with the head of the Ukrainian president’s office in Washington, Andriy Yermak, promising broad support, including the planned delivery of hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of Is. Armored vehicles by mid-January.
Slovakia has confirmed its readiness to host any peace talks between Russia and UkraineDespite Kiev’s accusation that it is playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin. Russia’s president on Thursday described it as “acceptable” for the country to become a “forum” for negotiations over the conflict, which US President-elect Donald Trump has said he could end after taking office in January. That possibility has raised concerns in Kiev that a deal could be struck on terms favorable to Moscow, as Ukraine struggles on the battlefield. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said on Facebook late Friday: “If someone wants to hold peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and hospitable.”
Ukraine has received the first shipment of liquefied natural gas from the USKiev says the deal will boost Ukrainian and European energy security as a key gas transit agreement with Russia expires. Despite the war, Moscow has continued to pump gas from Ukraine to Europe under a deal worth billions of euros, an agreement Kiev has long said it will not renew when it expires at the end of this year. “Ukraine’s largest private energy company Detec has today taken delivery of its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States,” the company said on Friday. Agence France-Presse reported that the consignment was approximately 100 million cubic meters of gas.
A Russian court has sentenced a singer who burned his passport to protest Moscow’s Ukraine war to five and a half years in prison.A court in the Volga city of Samara found 26-year-old Eduard Charlotte guilty of “publicly insulting” the religious feelings of believers and “rehabilitating Nazism” over a video published online, state news agency RIA Novosti reports. Had found. The singer posted a video in June 2023 in which he burned his Russian passport in protest against the military operation. In another video he crucified an image of Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, which has strongly supported the offensive. Charlotte initially left Russia for Armenia after the attack but was arrested at St. Petersburg airport in November 2023 while attempting to return to Russia.