Ukraine-Russia war latest: UK denies spying claims against British diplomat as Kyiv recalls faulty shells – UK Times

Ukraine is withdrawing faulty 120mm mortar shells from the frontline after multiple reports of them misfiring, officials said.

The supply of defective shells is being investigated by an interdepartmental commission, Ukraine’s defence ministry said, which said around 100,000 Ukraine-made 120mm rounds had to be recalled from the battlefield.

Several complaints and videos shared on social media showed the mortar shells not exploding or failing to hit their targets. Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the withdrawal of the batches of ammunition and said it will now provide Ukrainian forces with imported shells.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian soldiers said the rounds did not explode, remained stuck in the launcher or fell off target.

In a statement issued yesterday, the FSB said: “During counterintelligence work, the Russian Federal Security Service has discovered an undeclared British intelligence presence under the cover of the national embassy in Moscow.

A new ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives, two senior Ukrainian government sources said. The deadly missiles caused little damage upon hitting targets in Ukraine’s east, they said.

Vladimir Putin said the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile strike was a successful test and that it reached its target – a missile and defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Their comments appeared to confirm the Kremlin’s own description of the weapon’s use last Thursday as a warning to the West after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to fire their missiles into Russia.

The two sources provided more details about the new weapon as Western experts try to learn more about what US officials say was an experimental intermediate-range missile.

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles are typically meant to be used for long-range nuclear strikes on targets thousands of kilometres away. One of the sources said the missile was carrying dummy warheads and described the damage caused as “quite small”.

The second source said: “In this case, (the missile) was without explosives… There were no types of explosions like we expected. There was something, but it was not huge.”

Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said.

Russian troops swept through swathes of Ukraine in early 2022 before being pushed back to its east and south. The 1,000km (620-mile) frontline has been largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller-scale advances that began in July.

“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.

The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, which studies combat footage and provides front line maps.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase, with Russia reported to be using North Korean troops in Ukraine and Kyiv now using Western-supplied missiles to strike back inside Russia.

Moscow, which like North Korea has not confirmed or denied the presence of the troops, used a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on Ukraine last week and Ukraine reported the biggest Russian drone attack on its territory so far yesterday.

The thrust of the advance has been in Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into the town of Kurakhove. Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then pummelled Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs, according to Russian analysts.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said yesterday that Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.

Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses though Western intelligence estimates casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.

A Ukrainian delegation led by defence minister Rustem Umerov is visiting South Korea to ask for weapons to use in its war with Russia, according to media reports.

The delegation had met with South Korea’s national security adviser Shin Won-sik to exchange views on the conflict in Ukraine, the DongA Ilbo newspaper reported today, without giving a source.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said Kyiv will send a detailed request to Seoul for arms support including artillery and air defence systems, according to his remarks in an interview with South Korean broadcaster KBS in October.

The South China Morning Post also reported this week that a Ukrainian delegation was due to visit South Korea to request weapons aid, citing an informed source.

The group was expected to meet South Korean counterparts as early as today, according to the report.

South Korea’s foreign minister Cho Tae-yul, asked earlier this month whether Seoul would send weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea aiding Russia, said all possible scenarios were under consideration and Seoul would be watching the level of participation by North Korean troops in Russia and what Pyongyang received from Moscow in return.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that each Shahed drone that Russia launched at his country overnight on Monday has 85 foreign components and that Moscow obtained them by circumventing international sanctions.

He said on the Telegram messaging app that “we need more joint effort so that the sanctions work and force Russia to stop this war”.

As Russian Shahed drones spread out across Ukraine late on Monday, the air raid alert in the Kyiv region overnight lasted more than seven hours.

Russia is trying to unnerve civilians and wear down their will to resist in the war, military analysts say.

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg write: