Russia Ukraine war latest: Major drone attack on Putin’s forces by Kyiv as North Korea ‘prepares more troops’ – UK Times

Russian forces recently executed at least six unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) in Donetsk, a US-based think tank said citing Ukrainian sources.

“Ukrainian sources circulated footage on 23 January of Russian soldiers shooting unarmed Ukrainian POWs in an unspecified area of Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Ukrainian officials are investigating social media footage of Russian forces executing six captured and unarmed Ukrainian servicemembers in an unspecified area of Donetsk oblast, the country’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lyubinets said.

He noted that the footage shows a seventh Ukrainian POW in this group but that it is unclear what happened to the seventh POW based on the footage.

“ISW has frequently reported that Russian forces are conducting frontline executions of Ukrainian POWs and continues to assess that Russian military commanders are either complicit in or enabling their subordinates to conduct these executions,” the think tank said.

South Korea’s military said it suspects North Korea is preparing to send additional troops to Russia after its soldiers fighting in the Russian-Ukraine war suffered heavy casualties.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff also assessed in a report distributed to journalists that North Korea is continuing its preparations to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile intended to reach the US.

They said that North Korea is believed to be accelerating preparations to send more troops to Russia, without saying how it reached the assessment.

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine, killing three civilians and damaging residential and commercial buildings, officials said.

The interior ministry said that drone debris had killed two men and a woman in the central Kyiv region, and that another person was injured. The attack damaged a multistory residential apartment building, eight private houses, commercial buildings, and several private cars, Kyiv regional officials said.

As the war approaches the three-year mark, Russia has stepped up its air attacks on Ukraine, sending dozens of drones almost every night.

Ukrainian officials have said that Russian forces launched more than 7,000 drones in 2024, at least twice as many as in 2023. Most were shot down or redirected by electronic warfare, but many still hit their targets.

The European Union cannot rely on the United States to defend it and must increase military spending and security preparedness to help Ukraine and deter Russia from targeting any more of its neighbors, top EU officials have warned.

Donald Trump has said Volodymyr Zelensky “has had enough” and “wants to settle” with Russian president Vladimir Putin but criticised him for fighting back against Russia in the first place.

Mr Zelensky, he said, is “no angel” and “shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen,” even though it was Russia that invaded Ukraine.

“First of all, he’s fighting a much bigger entity, okay, much bigger. When he was, you know, talking so brave… Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful. He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal, and it would have been a deal that would have been, it would have been a nothing deal,” Mr Trump claimed.

“I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided: ‘I want to fight,’” he said, suggesting he believes the Ukrainian president should have capitulated and conceded territory in the face of the impending Russian attack.

Ukraine is in the final stages of drafting recruitment reforms to attract 18- to 25-year-olds who are currently exempt from mobilization as it looks for ways to bolster its fighting force, the battlefield commander recently appointed to the President’s Office said.

Volodymyr Zelensky said a key element in achieving security for Ukraine and bringing Russia to account was reducing European consumption of Russian energy, particularly oil.

“Naturally, energy resources, particularly oil, are one of the biggest keys to peace and real security,” he said. “And Europe needs to work more closely with America and other international partners, not Russia, on energy resources,” the Ukrainian president said.

The president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said a firm price cap on Russian oil was “the path to global security” and stood by $30 per barrel on Russian oil, as recommended by an international expert group he co-chairs. The cap, introduced after Russia’s invasion, currently stands at $60.

“We fully support US president Donald Trump’s aspiration to lower the price on oil,” Mr Yermak wrote on Telegram. “The consequence of this would be the collapse of Russia’s ability to finance the war.”

Ukraine says talks about a possible foreign troop contingent to enforce a ceasefire in the war-hit country are only in their early stages.

“Yes, the discussion is ongoing about… the military contingents of foreign powers, foreign nations that can be potentially deployed to Ukraine,” foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told reporters at a briefing in Kyiv. “The discussion is in its very early stages,” he said.

To prevent Russian aggression after the war ends, Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from its allies as part of any potential peace deal. President Volodymyr Zelensky says this would need to include at least 200,000 European peacekeepers.

In a later interview with Bloomberg, he clarified that number would depend on the size of Ukraine’s military, which he has said Kyiv does not want to cut as a part of any deal – something Russia has demanded. Its armed forces currently number around 800,000 personnel.

“We think that durable, reliable security guarantees for Ukraine must include both Europe and the United States. This is how we can ensure that this peace is sustainable and durable,” Mr Tykhyi said.