Russia detains two officials linked to energy ministry in fraud probe; Russian attacks on Kharkiv kill four

Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded 10 more, said regional authorities.

Ukraine’s military intelligence service said on Thursday that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August. 

Russia detains former, current deputy energy ministers in fraud probe 

Russian investigators detained one current and one former deputy energy minister on Thursday, reported Russian media, as part of an investigation into fraud in the coal industry.

Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Mochalnikov, who has been in office since April 2022, and Anatoly Yanovsky, who served from 2008 until 2021, were detained, reported Interfax news agency.

The Energy Ministry confirmed investigative actions against the current and former deputy ministers without naming them.

The ministry told state news agency RIA Novosti that it was assisting law enforcers in the investigation.

The charges are related to fraud linked to the closure of coal mines, Interfax reported. Both men were responsible for the coal industry in their positions at the ministry.

The Kommersant business daily reported that a further four unnamed people had been detained alongside Mochalnikov.

It said that direct damages in the case amounted to 500 million roubles ($5-million), with indirect damages of 12 billion roubles.

Russia in recent months has been swept by a series of high-profile corruption cases with a string of senior defence officials arrested on charges including large-scale bribery and embezzlement.

Russian attacks kill four in Ukraine’s east

Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded 10 more, said regional authorities.

A thermobaric ammunition attack on the town of Kupiansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region wounded 10 people, said regional governor Oleh Syniehubov on the Telegram messaging app. A woman who was admitted to hospital in a serious condition after the attack died later, he added.

Syniehubov said that a two-storey retail building had been damaged, along with a dozen kiosks and the windows of nearby homes.

Russia occupied Kupiansk in the early days of its 2022 invasion but was pushed out by a lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive in September of that year.

In recent months, Moscow’s forces have been advancing slowly back towards the town and are now less than 4km away from its northern outskirts, according to open-source maps.

Russian shelling later in the day killed three people in the area around the strategic hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, said governor Vadym Filashkin on Telegram.

Russian troops have been stepping up their advance towards Pokrovsk in recent months, moving as close as 8km from its outskirts.

Russian media and war bloggers reported on Thursday that Russian forces had advanced into the coal mining town of Selydove, about 20km southeast of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s General Staff said the most intense Russian assaults along the entire frontline were currently taking place in the Pokrovsk front, including near Selydove.

However, the General Staff did not say whether the Russians had entered the town.

Russian forces had captured the villages of Serebrianka and Mykolaivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Wednesday, as military blogs reported Russian advances near key frontline towns.

North Korean units already in Kursk region, says Ukraine

Ukraine’s military intelligence service said on Thursday that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

“The first units of the military from the DPRK [North Korea], which were trained at the eastern Russian training grounds, have already arrived in the combat zone of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In particular, on October 23, 2024, their presence was recorded in the Kursk region,” said the Ukrainian intelligence agency.

It said a total of around 12,000 North Korean troops, including 500 officers and three generals, were already in Russia, and training was taking place at five military bases.

Russian Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was responsible for overseeing the training of North Korean military, the agency said.

Ukraine earlier called on its allies to respond firmly to North Korean involvement in the war by imposing new sanctions and further isolating Pyongyang.

Putin does not deny reports about North Korean troops

President Vladimir Putin did not deny US claims that North Korea had sent troops to Russia but said on Thursday it was up to Moscow how to run its mutual defence clause with Pyongyang and accused the West of escalating the Ukraine war.

The US said on Wednesday that it had seen evidence that North Korea had sent 3,000 troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that the West is casting as a significant escalation of the Ukraine war.

Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something.”

He said Nato officers and instructors were directly involved in the Ukraine war and it was the West that had escalated the Ukraine crisis.

“We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work,” said Putin.

The Kremlin chief specifically mentioned Article 4 of the Russian partnership deal with North Korea, which deals with mutual defence.

“There is Article 4. We have never doubted in the least that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously. But what we do within the framework of this article is our business,” said Putin.

Putin said Russia’s army was moving forward along all sections of the front in Ukraine and had trapped a large number of Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region.

Asked by one of Russia’s top Kremlin correspondents what he would be ready to consider to end the war, Putin said:

“We are ready to consider any options for peace agreements based on the realities that are taking shape on the ground. And I’m not ready for anything else.”

Russia, which is advancing, controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas — a coal and steel producing zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Ukraine has said it will not rest until all Russian troops are expelled from its territory.

Asked about a Wall Street Journal report that cited Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as saying he had threatened Putin against going after Ukraine on an unspecified date in the past. Putin said he did not recall such a threat.

“You can threaten anyone. [But] it is pointless to threaten Russia because it simply invigorates us,” said Putin. “But I do not recall such a conversation with Mr. Trump.”

The Journal quoted Trump as saying that he had warned Putin that if he went after Ukraine, “I am going to hit you so hard, you’re not even going to believe it. I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow.”

Putin said it was wise not to take such statements seriously given the heat of the presidential election campaign but said that he felt Trump was sincere about his desire to end the war in Ukraine.

BRICS infrastructure ‘is enough for cross-border payments’

Cross-border payments for trade between BRICS countries were experiencing problems, but there were no plans to create a special system because the existing infrastructure is sufficient, said Putin on Thursday.

Delays in payments for trade with Russia’s major partners such as China or Turkey where banks are under pressure from Western regulators to scrutinise transactions with Russia have become a major headache for Russian companies and banks.

Before the summit, Russia outlined an alternative payment system in national BRICS currencies that would include a new messaging system and a network of national commercial banks linked to each other through the BRICS central banks.

“The question is very important today. One of the key issues is the problem of settlements,” Putin told the news conference after the summit.

The Russian-hosted summit of the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — ended on Thursday.

Putin said the existing financial messaging system, created by the Russian central bank as well as similar systems run by other BRICS central banks could be used to facilitate mutual payments in national currencies.

“But we are not inventing any separate joint system for now. What we already have is on the whole sufficient,” Putin said.

He told BRICS leaders on Thursday that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war after a sharp rise in tension between Israel and Iran.

Ukrainian corn seed flows to Europe in further farm trade shift

Ukraine has rapidly expanded exports of corn seed to the EU in the past two years in rare good news for its war-hit agricultural sector but adding to European farmers’ grievances about what they say is unfair competition from Kyiv.

It is ramping up shipments under free trade terms granted by the European Union following Russia’s invasion, partly reversing the bloc’s longstanding seed exports to Ukraine.

That has injected some income into its farm industry which is struggling with losses from the destruction of land and infrastructure in the war with Russia.

Ukraine’s total seed exports, mostly for corn (maize), reached $121-million last year against a pre-war level of just $22-million in 2021, according to the Seed Association of Ukraine, an industry group. Its share of the EU corn seed market had gone from zero to around 10% share since 2021, according to the French corn growers’ group AGPM.

Although seeds represented a fraction of an estimated $23-billion in Ukrainian agricultural exports last year where grain dominated the volume, they offer bigger profits for farmers than bulk crops like corn and wheat. Ukrainian farm exports were about $27.7-billion in 2021.

Ukraine shoots down 40 Russian drones 

Ukraine said on Thursday it shot down 40 of 50 Russian drones launched in an overnight attack, while another seven had disappeared from radars.

Kyiv said one drone was still in Ukrainian airspace while two others had turned back towards Russia and Belarus.

Ukraine uses electronic warfare systems to confuse drones’ navigation systems, which often leads them to disappear from radars or change course. DM