Shaun
Ukraine has claimed to have struck a Russian industrial facility producing fuel for missiles, as Moscow says it has foiled several assassination plots on senior officers.
Kyiv said on Thursday that its air force had had carried out a strike in Russia’s Rostov region on a factory which was used to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles used in attacks on Ukraine.
It did say what damage was caused in the attack or give an exact date, but said it had been struck in the past few days.
It comes as Russia claimed it had foiled several Ukrainian plots to assassinate senior officers and their families using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
The country’s Federal Security Service said it had arrested four Russians accused of helping plan the attack, just weeks after a high-ranking oddicer was killed outside his Moscow apartment by a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
It comes weeks after Ukraine’s intelligence service killed a top Russian officer outside his apartment building in Moscow by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
South Korean intelligence services have claimed that Ukraine had captured a wounded North Korean soldier fighting for Russia, Korean broadcaster YTN reported.
It marks the first time a North Korean has been taken by Ukrainian forces since Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to help Russia in the fighting in the Kursk region.
“Through real-time information sharing with an allied country’s intelligence agency, it has been confirmed that one injured North Korean soldier has been captured,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said in a statement.
North Korean troops are suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks, Kyiv’s military intelligence claimed on Thursday.
The intelligence agency, known by its acronym GUR, said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units. It said North Korean troops also faced supply issues and even shortages of drinking water.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed earlier this week that 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed and wounded in the fighting in Kursk. It marked the first estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties several weeks after Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent over 10,000 troops to help the Russian war effort.
The casualty disclosure came as the Joe Biden administration was pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before president-elect Donald Trump takes over in January.
Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region in August, dealing a significant blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some of its troops from eastern Ukraine, where they were pressing a slow-moving offensive.
The Russian army has been able to reclaim some territory in the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces, but has failed to fully dislodge them.
