Two Russian missiles hit a hotel in Kharkiv late on Wednesday, injuring 11 people, one seriously, said the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov. Visiting Turkish journalists were among the injured, he wrote. Earlier, a 48-year-old woman was killed and a school partially destroyed in Russian airstrikes against Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.
Ukraine is effectively a test site for North Korean nuclear missiles because Kim Jong-un’s regime is supplying Russia with rockets that can deliver an atomic bomb, South Korea has said. “By exporting missiles to Russia, the DPRK uses Ukraine as the test site of its nuclear-capable missiles,” said the South Korean ambassador to the UN, Hwang Joon-kook, using the official name of North Korea. One of the missiles flew 460km, the distance from a North Korean launch site to South Korean’s city of Pusan. “From the ROK [South Korean] standpoint, it amounts to a simulated attack, Hwang said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met his Lithuanian counterpart, Gitanas Nauseda, in Vilnius on Wednesday. The surprise visit marked the start of Zelenskiy’s tour of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – all former Soviet republics and now EU and Nato members. In a statement on X, Zelenskiy called the countries “reliable friends and principled partners” to Ukraine.
Western hesitation on aid to Ukraine helps Putin, Zelenskiy warned in a news conference with Nauseda. Zelenskiy expressed his desire to see action on Ukraine gaining Nato membership at this year’s Nato summit, adding that 2024 would be decisive for Ukraine and its allies. At the news conference in Lithuania, he said: “Russia can be stopped.”
A €200m (£172m) package of long-term military assistance to Ukraine has been approved by the Lithuanian government. The news was announced after a bilateral meeting between Zelenskiy and Nauseda on Wednesday.
Pope Francis has expressed his concern that international attention is shifting away from the nearly two-year-old Russian war against Ukraine, and warned that it risks becoming a “forgotten” war.
An “explosive” new attack drone has been developed by Iran for Russia’s war in Ukraine, Sky News reported. The existence of a jet engine-powered version of the Shahed drone has been reported in recent days.
Russia accidentally bombed a Russian village, said the UK Ministry of Defence, with “inadequate training” and “crew fatigue” among Russian forces likely exacerbating accidents.
A majority (63%) of Russians continue to support the full-scale war against Ukraine, according to a poll released by the University of Chicago’s nonpartisan National Opinion Research Center (Norc).
Ukraine’s agricultural product exports via its alternative Black Sea corridor reached 4.8m tonnes in December, surpassing the maximum monthly total exported via a former UN-brokered grain deal, brokers said on Wednesday.
