Here is the situation on Wednesday, October 30, 2024:
Military developments
- A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has resulted in an explosion and caused a fire to break out, according to the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
- A Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has killed at least four people and injured six others, with a medical centre also damaged.
- A small number of North Korean troops are already in Ukraine, according to a United States media report, which cited two anonymous Western intelligence officials.
- South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that North Korean troops have entered the battlefield in Ukraine earlier than expected. Trudeau said their deployment will escalate Russia’s war, Yoon’s office said.
- About 2,000 North Korean soldiers are moving towards Russia’s Kursk region and a small number are already there, according to the Pentagon’s spokesman. Major-General Patrick Ryder said he is concerned they will be used to “support combat operations against Ukrainian forces”, adding that he could not corroborate reports that North Korean troops are in Ukraine itself.
- US President Joe Biden has said Ukraine should strike back if North Korean troops cross into the country, adding that he is “concerned” about reports of their presence in Russia’s Kursk region.
- Russian forces test-fired missiles over thousands of miles to simulate a “massive” nuclear response to an enemy first strike, with President Vladimir Putin saying the drills were carried out due to “growing geopolitical tensions and the emergence of new external threats and risks”.
International diplomacy
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has discussed reported North Korean involvement in the war with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
- Finnish President Alexander Stubb has said he told China’s President Xi Jinping that North Korea’s involvement in the war was an “escalation, expansion and provocation”, in a message delivered on behalf of NATO and the European Union during talks in Beijing.
- NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have announced a new high-level task force to strengthen cooperation between the military alliance and the EU, in light of the “significant escalation” the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia represents.
- Germany’s culture minister, Claudia Roth, has said Russia’s war is “deliberately directed against culture and the cultural identity of Ukraine”, on the second day of her visit to the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
Finances
- Russia will file a legal challenge against Finland’s decision to seize tens of millions of dollars in Russian state assets that are in the country, after Ukrainian oil and gas company Naftogaz successfully petitioned the Finish government to do so.
- Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom has reported a nine-month loss of 309 billion roubles ($3.2bn), compared with a profit of 446 billion roubles ($4.5bn) in the same period of 2023. It did not explain the reason behind the losses.
Ukrainian affairs
- Ukraine’s parliament has accepted the resignation of prosecutor general Andriy Kostin, following a scandal around officials receiving fake disability status to avoid military service.
- Ukraine will begin calling up another 160,000 recruits to its military, according to the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Lytvynenko. An anonymous security source has said the recruitment will take place over three months.
