Ukraine
Russia shells 100 settlements in 24 hours as Ukraine’s commander in chief warns war is entering a new phase
Guardianship staff and agencies
Russia has shelled more than 100 settlements in the past 24 hours – more than on any single day this year – Ukraine said, as its commander-in-chief warned that the war with Russia was heading into a new phase of stationary and attritional fighting, a Phase that could allow Moscow to rebuild its military power.
North Korea is reported to have supplied Russia with two months’ worth of artillery shells.
The Russians have fired millions of shells into towns and villages since their invasion in February 2022, reducing several settlements in eastern Ukraine to rubble.
“In the last 24 hours, the enemy has shelled 118 settlements in ten regions,” Igor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, wrote on social media.
“This is the highest number of towns and villages attacked since the beginning of the year.”
Ukraine also reported a Russian attack on an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, a central industrial city. There were no injuries, but it took nearly 100 firefighters several hours to extinguish the resulting fire, Klymenko said. The overnight shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region left one person dead and another died in the southern Kherson region, local officials said.
In the northern Salivka district of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, preparations are underway for the demolition of a residential building that was most severely damaged by shelling by Russian troops. Photo: Ukrinform/Shutterstock
The Ukrainian government and the West fear that Russia will step up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the cold winter, as it did last year.
Citing intelligence, a South Korean lawmaker said on Wednesday that North Korea had provided Russia with more than a million badly needed artillery shells in exchange for advanced Russian technologies that would bolster Kim’s nuclear-armed military.
“Energy war”: Ukraine is trying to secure electricity supplies before winter
In an article published for The Economist on Wednesday, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said his army needed important new military capabilities and technological innovations to break out of the new phase of the war, now in its 21st month.
He harshly described the risks of prolonged, grueling fighting: “This will benefit Russia, allow it to rebuild its military power, and ultimately threaten the armed forces of Ukraine and the state itself.”
His article comes almost five months after the start of a major Ukrainian counteroffensive that failed to achieve a serious breakthrough against heavily mined Russian defenses. Fighting is expected to ease as the weather worsens.
“Just like in World War I, we have reached the level of technology that puts us in a stalemate,” Zaluzhnyi was quoted as saying in an interview published alongside his article.
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Portal
The article highlighted Russia’s airpower advantage as a factor making the advance difficult and called for Ukraine to launch massive drone strikes to overwhelm Russian air defenses.
“Basic weapons such as rockets and grenades remain essential. But Ukraine’s armed forces need key military capabilities and technologies to break out of this kind of war. The most important thing is the air force,” he wrote.
He called it a priority for Ukraine to build up its reserve forces, despite pointing out that it had limited capacity to train them within the country and pointed to gaps in legislation that allowed people to enlist in the service revoke.
“We are trying to fix these problems. We are introducing a unified register of conscripts and must expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilization.
“We are also implementing a ‘combat internship’ where newly mobilized and trained personnel are placed with experienced frontline units to prepare them.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands during their meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome outside the town of Tsiolkovsky, about 200 km (125 miles) from the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region, Russia. on September 13, 2023. Photo: Vladimir Smirnov/AP
As Ukraine hopes for better technology and additional funding from the West, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said the North had been sending shells to Russia using ships and other transport since early August. These shells would last the Russians for about two months, said Yoo Sang-bum. Yoo attended a closed meeting with intelligence officials on Wednesday.
NIS officials did not immediately respond to a request to confirm Yoo’s account of the meeting. The agency has had a mixed record in tracking developments in North Korea, complicated by Pyongyang’s tight controls on information. But North Korea and Russia have actively increased the visibility of their partnership amid their separate and intensifying confrontation with the United States. Both Pyongyang and Moscow have rejected claims by the United States and South Korea that the North has supplied weapons to Russia.
There are concerns in South Korea that North Korea could receive sensitive Russian technology that would increase the threat from Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. However, the NIS said it was more likely that Russian assistance would be limited to conventional capabilities, possibly including efforts to improve North Korea’s aging fighter jet fleets, Yoo said.
There is growing evidence that North Korean arms sold to Russia pose a threat to Ukraine
The United States, South Korea and Japan issued a joint statement on Oct. 26 strongly condemning what they described as North Korea’s arms sales to Russia, saying such shipments would reduce the number of lives lost to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine increase dramatically.
The White House previously said North Korea had delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and ammunition to Russia. The White House released images showing the containers were loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship before being transported by train to southwest Russia.
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