Tag: Russia

Russia unleashed its largest air strike on Ukraine in almost three months yesterday, launching 120 missiles and 90 drones that killed at least seven people and caused severe damage to the power system, officials said.

Ukrainians had been bracing for weeks for a renewed Russian attack on an already hobbled energy system, fearing long winter blackouts and mounting psychological pressure almost 1,000 days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

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Officials confirmed damage to “critical infrastructure” or power cuts in regions from Volyn, Rivne, Lviv in the west to Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.

DTEK imposed emergency power cuts in the southern Odesa region, but had lifted them in three other regions by late morning. Emergency work was ongoing in the Odesa, Rivne and Volyn regions, national grid operator Ukrenergo said.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had launched a massive strike on energy facilities that supply Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.

As many as 50,000 Russian and North Korean troops are preparing to launch a new counteroffensive to push Ukrainian forces out of their positions in Russia’s western Kursk region, multiple Ukrainian military sources told ABC News.

Moscow has been trying to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk since they seized a chunk of the border region in a daring August offensive, marking the first time that Kyiv’s forces have seized and held significant Russian territory since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

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The expected counteroffensive intends to retake land captured by Ukrainian forces in Kursk since August, Kyiv military sources told ABC News. North Korean forces will be involved, they said, but it is unclear how many of Pyongyang’s soldiers are prepared to join the fight.

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said last week there are 10,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to Kursk.

In this image taken from a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Nov. 7, 2024, Russian soldiers fight with Ukrainian troops in the Sudzhansky district of the Kursk region of western Russia.

“We’ll see exactly how these forces are integrated into Russian operations, and how they’re committed to the battlefield, assuming that they are replacements for Russian forces,” Ryder told journalists during a briefing.

Russia and China this week engaged in the largest military drills in some 30 years after they launched joint naval and air exercises spanning both hemispheres on Tuesday, a report by Reuters confirmed.

The Russian defense ministry said the week-long war games will include 90,000 troops, 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, along with 120 planes and helicopters spread across the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas.

The exercises, dubbed “Ocean 24,” coincided with meetings in Brussels between the U.S. and the European Union in which the issue of security in the Indo-Pacific, as well as China’s support for Russia amid the war in Ukraine, were addressed.

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The U.S. accused Beijing of crossing a line and providing “very substantial” support to Russia after more than two and half years of war and sanctions that are said to have begun taking a toll on its military stockpiles.

“These are not dual-use capabilities,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told reporters, according to Politico EU, in reference to the latest material supplies China provided Russia. “These are basically being applied directly to the Russian war machine.”

A statement by the State Department following the U.S.-EU meeting accused China of helping Russia to evade sanctions and called on Beijing to “act in support of international law” – including in its attempts to push through any peace proposals.

Iran has supplied ballistic missiles to Russia. Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security, confirmed this information in an interview  with Didban Iran, explaining that these exchanges are part of a barter agreement wherein Tehran receives soybeans and wheat in return and “circumvents sanctions through partnership with Russia”.

Ardestani admitted Iran’s military aid to Moscow just hours after Iran’s mission to the UN dismissed a report from The Wall Street Journal that said Iran had delivered short-range ballistic missiles to Russia.

“We must resort to barter to meet our needs, including importing soybeans and wheat. Part of the barter involves sending missiles, and another part involves dispatching military drones to Russia,” Ardestani stated.

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When asked if sending ballistic missiles to Russia could result in further sanctions or the activation of the so-called snapback mechanism against Iran, the lawmaker responded, “It can’t get any worse than it already is. We supply missiles to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Hashd al-Shaabi. Why shouldn’t we give them to Russia?”

The Iranian politician emphasised that his country “sells weapons and earns dollars,” and also “avoids sanctions through its partnership with Russia.”

“We import soy, corn, and other goods from Russia. Europeans sell weapons to Ukraine. NATO is in Ukraine, so why shouldn’t we support our ally by shipping missiles and drones to Russia?” added Ardestani.

Countries that provide weapons to terrorist organizations and states must be punished, said Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, in response to the news about Iran sending ballistic missiles to Russia.

“In response to Russian ballistic missile supplies, Ukraine should be authorized to destroy stockpiles of these missiles with Western weaponry to avoid terror,” he asserted.

He believes such strikes are defensive rather than escalatory.

On September 6, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran had delivered short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. The Times reported that 200 Fath-360 ballistic missiles were involved.

On September 7, Iran’s UN envoy denied Read more this, stating, “Iran refrains from such actions and urges other countries to cease arms deliveries to parties involved in the conflict”

If the Chinese Communist party truly believes it has a territorial claim to Taiwan, then it should also be trying to take back land from Russia, Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has said.

Lai made the remark in an interview to local media on Sunday, noting Beijing’s very different approach to two similar historical moments of territorial loss.

Under the rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP claims Taiwan is a Chinese province run by illegal separatists, and he has vowed to annex Taiwan under what it calls “reunification”.

Beijing said Taiwan has been part of China since “ancient times” but was taken by Japan during the “century of humiliation”, the period between 1839 and 1949 during which China was repeatedly subject to defeat and subjugation. Complete restoration of China’s losses in that time is a driving narrative of the CCP, and today is largely focused on Taiwan.

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However, Lai, who was elected president in January, noted that China also lost land to Russia during that period but was not making any effort to take it back. He said this showed Beijing’s plans to annex Taiwan – which it has not ruled out using force to achieve – were not driven by territorial integrity.

 “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t it take back the lands occupied by Russia that was signed over in the treaty of Aigun? Russia is now at its weakest, right?” he said, referencing a 1858 treaty in which Russia annexed about 1m sq km of Chinese territory, including Haishengwei – today known as Vladivostok.

Russia has blamed the United States and vowed “consequences” for a Ukrainian missile strike on Sevastopol in occupied Crimea on Sunday, which officials said killed four people – including two children.

Around 150 more were injured in the attack as missile debris fell on a beach nearby.

Russia’s defence ministry said the missiles used by Ukraine were US-supplied ATACMS missiles, and claimed they were programmed by US specialists.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the strike “barbaric” and accused the U.S. of “killing Russian children”.

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He pointed towards comments by President Vladimir Putin, who recently vowed to target countries supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Moscow said Sunday’s deaths and injuries were caused by falling debris, after its air defences in Crimea intercepted five missiles loaded with cluster warheads launched by Ukrainian forces.

Footage carried on Russian state TV showed chaos on the beach in the Uchkuyevka area, as people ran from the falling debris and some injured people were carried away on sun loungers.

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