Russia Strikes Ukraine With North Korean Missiles
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Russia struck Zaporizhzhia with North Korean ballistic missiles overnight, killing six and wounding 19, while drones and artillery killed three more including a 15-year-old boy in the Dnipropetrovsk region, bringing the civilian death toll to at least nine.
- Zelensky warned late Monday that Moscow received additional ballistic missiles from Pyongyang and is preparing to deploy more North Korean troops, referencing the strategic partnership Putin and Kim Jong Un signed just over two years ago.
- Ukraine's air force reported Russia targeted Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv with Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles while launching 120 long-range strike drones of various types across the country overnight.
- Russia is scaling up ballistic missile production to exploit Ukraine's critical shortage of Patriot interceptors, and the Institute for the Study of War warned that Kyiv's air defense gap offers Moscow an opportunity to cause very serious damage over the coming winter while delaying meaningful negotiations.
- A Russian strike hit the grounds of a Kyiv children's hospital, leaving two craters and shattering windows, though children and medical workers were in bomb shelters and nobody was injured.
- Ukraine struck back across the border overnight, with Russia's Defense Ministry saying it intercepted nearly 400 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions and occupied Crimea; Russia's largest e-commerce company Wildberries said its Voronezh-region warehouses caught fire.
- Russian independent outlet Astra reported an oil refinery in Orsk — roughly 1,300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border — was hit and published images of smoke over the facility, one of Ukraine's deepest known strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
- Moscow and Washington are at an impasse on diplomacy: the ISW assessed that the Kremlin will not enter serious negotiations as long as Putin believes a viable military path to his full objectives exists, while U.S.-led diplomatic efforts have stalled as Washington's attention has shifted to the Iran war.
Why it matters: North Korean ballistic missiles are now directly striking Ukrainian cities, and Zelensky says more are coming alongside additional North Korean troops — a concrete escalation that the ISW explicitly links to Ukraine's Patriot interceptor shortage, warning this dynamic hands Russia a viable military path through winter and pushes serious negotiations further out of reach.
Ask SkimNews
