North Korea’s foreign minister visits Russia; Moscow test-fires missiles to simulate ‘massive’ response to nuclear attack

Russia test-fired missiles over distances of thousands of kilometres on Tuesday to simulate a “massive” nuclear response to an enemy first strike.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said he told China’s President Xi Jinping that North Korean activities with Russia were an escalation and provocation in a message on behalf of Nato and the EU during talks in Beijing on Tuesday.

North Korean foreign minister visits Russia

North Korea’s foreign minister arrived in Russia on Tuesday for talks as the Russia-Ukraine war appeared to take a dangerous new turn, with Nato and South Korea expressing alarm that North Korean troops could soon be joining in on Moscow’s side.

Nato said on Monday thousands of North Korean troops were moving towards the front line, a development which has prompted Kyiv to call for more weapons and an international plan to keep those troops at bay.

Two US officials confirmed on Tuesday that some North Korean soldiers were in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August and hold hundreds of square kilometres of territory.

The US has said any North Korean troops fighting in the war would be “fair game” for Ukrainian attacks and that Washington would not impose any fresh limits on Ukraine’s use of US weapons if North Korea entered the fight.

South Korea, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed North decades after the 1950-1953 Korean War, also condemned the deployments, with officials in Seoul worried about what Russia may be providing to Pyongyang in return.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui arrived in Russia’s Far East on Tuesday on her way to Moscow, said Russian state media. Russian state news agencies said it was not clear who Choe, making her second visit in six weeks, would meet.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to meet her.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said after talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday that the North Korean moves were sending the war into a new phase.

“This war is becoming internationalized, extending beyond two countries,” said Zelenskiy on X.

“We agreed to strengthen intelligence and expertise exchange, intensify contacts at all levels, especially the highest, in order to develop an action strategy and countermeasures to address this escalation,” said Zelensky.

Yoon told Zelensky that if North Korea received aid from Russia and was able to glean military experience and knowledge from its involvement in the war it would pose a “great threat” to South Korea’s security, said his office.

South Korea has said it may start supplying weapons to Ukraine if North Korean troops join Russia’s war. Putin has not denied the presence of North Korean troops in the country.

What role the North Korean troops may play is unclear.

“The numbers make this more than a symbolic effort, but the troops will likely be in support roles and constitute less than 1% of Russia’s forces,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“Russia is desperate for additional manpower, and this is one element of Russia’s effort to fill the ranks without a second mobilisation,” it added, noting the presence could grow.

Russia fires missiles to simulate ‘massive’ response to nuclear attack

Russia test-fired missiles over distances of thousands of kilometres on Tuesday to simulate a “massive” nuclear response to an enemy first strike.

“Given the growing geopolitical tensions and the emergence of new external threats and risks, it is important to have modern and constantly ready-to-use strategic forces,” said Putin as he announced the exercise.

It took place at a critical moment in the Russia-Ukraine war, after weeks of Russian signals to the West that Moscow would respond if the US and its allies allowed Kyiv to fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.

In televised comments, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin that the purpose of the drill was to practise delivering “a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy”.

The exercise involved Russia’s full nuclear “triad” of ground-, sea- and air-launched missiles.

A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia to Kamchatka, a peninsula in the Far East. Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles were fired from submarines, and cruise missiles were launched from strategic bomber planes, the defence ministry said.

Putin said using nuclear weapons would be an “extremely exceptional measure”.

“I stress that we are not going to get involved in a new arms race, but we will maintain nuclear forces at the level of necessary sufficiency,” he said.

He added that Russia was moving to new “stationary and mobile-based missile systems” which have a reduced launch preparation time and could overcome missile defence systems.

Finland warns Xi of ‘provocation’ by North Korea in Ukraine war

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said he told China’s President Xi Jinping that North Korean activities with Russia were an escalation and provocation in a message on behalf of Nato and the EU during talks in Beijing on Tuesday.

Stubb and Xi met as North Korea’s foreign minister arrived in Russia, with Western military alliance Nato and South Korea warning that Pyongyang’s troops could soon be entering the Ukraine war on Moscow’s side.

The US estimates 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed in eastern Russia.

“My message to the president was that North Korean activity right now， both in terms of arms exports, especially in terms of sending troops to Russia, is escalation, expansion and provocation. So we had a good discussion about this,” Stubb told reporters.

Stubb said he felt the Chinese-North Korean relationship “is not very comfortable at the moment”, and that he had warned Xi supporting Russia would have negative implications for EU ties.

Russian air attacks kill four in Kharkiv, injure six in Kyiv

At least four people were killed and another six injured in Russia’s waves of overnight attacks on Ukraine’s two largest cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv, said Ukrainian officials on Tuesday.

Another two were killed and seven injured in Russian shelling on Kherson city in southern Ukraine in the morning, a local governor said.

Russian forces have been attacking Ukrainian regions almost every night with drones, and the Ukrainian military reported that overnight they had shot down 26 out of 48 drones launched.

Four people were killed in Kharkiv in the early hours of Tuesday in Russia’s bombardment of the city’s Osnovianskyi district, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov on his Telegram messaging channel.

That attack followed a Russian guided bomb attack on Kharkiv late on Monday that shattered much of the Derzhprom building, one of the most celebrated landmarks in the city, dating from the 1920s.

In Kyiv, falling debris from a destroyed Russian drone injured six people and set a residential building on fire, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said.

In the morning attacks on Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messenger that the victims of the Russian shelling were a 62-year-old man and a 66-year-old woman.

Kherson region is split by the front line and regularly hit by Russian artillery, drones and missiles.

Chechen leader vows revenge after drone attack

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov promised on Tuesday to take revenge for a drone attack that caused a fire at a military training academy in his south Russian region.

Ukraine has frequently struck Russia with drones in the course of the war, but Tuesday’s attack appeared to be the first against Chechnya. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.

“They’ve bitten us — we will destroy them,” Kadyrov told reporters in a video published by Russian state news agency RIA.

“In the very near future, we’ll show them the kind of vengeance they’ve never even dreamt of,” he said.

Earlier, Kadyrov posted on Telegram that the drone strike had set fire to the roof of what he said was an empty building at the “special forces university” in the city of Gudermes. There were no casualties, he said.

Kadyrov has been a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, to which he has contributed Chechen forces. DM