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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with missiles, drones and glide bombs Tuesday, killing at least nine civilians, officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow is getting new military help from North Korea for its more than 4-year-old invasion.
Zelenskyy said Russian forces used ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea in an overnight attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where officials said six people were killed and 19 wounded.
Three more people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed by Russian drones and artillery in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.
In addition to the ballistic missiles, North Korea is preparing to deploy more of its troops to Russia, Zelenskyy said late Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2024, pledging mutual aid if either country faces aggression.
Kim has sent thousands of troops and huge supplies of weapons to support Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some experts say the engagement with Moscow is helping improve North Korea’s military capabilities, and Zelenskyy said the battlefield experience would help Pyongyang menace other countries in its region.
Ukraine says Russia is scaling up its production of ballistic missiles, aiming to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Patriot air defense interceptors that can stop them, and claims Moscow is preparing to recruit more troops for a new push on the front line that stretches 1,250 kilometers (775 miles) along eastern and southern Ukraine.
“Every step Russia takes — increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilization — all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stop the war have fizzled as Washington grew frustrated with the lack of progress and its attention turned to the Iran war.
“The Kremlin will not enter serious negotiations or make meaningful compromises on its demands as long as Putin believes that he has a viable military path to achieving his full objectives,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an analysis Monday.
“Ukraine’s Patriot shortages offer Russia an opportunity to cause very serious damage to Ukraine over the coming winter and will therefore contribute to delaying meaningful negotiations and protracting the war,” it said.
Russia hits the grounds of a Kyiv children’s hospital
Russian forces also struck parts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, overnight, according to officials. One strike hit the grounds of a children’s hospital, leaving two craters and shattering windows, the State Emergency Service said. Children and medical workers were in bomb shelters and nobody was hurt, it added.
At another location in Kyiv, a Russian strike started a fire in a warehouse that spread across about 1,200 square meters (nearly 13,000 square feet), according to emergency officials.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces overnight struck “military industrial facilities and transport and logistics centers” in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia with “ground-based precision weapons.”
It said in a statement that it hit civilian storage facilities housing drones in Kyiv and a metallurgical plant in Zaporizhzhia.
Russia targeted both cities with Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles, while launching 120 long-range strike drones across the country, Ukraine’s air force said.
Russia’s biggest e-commerce company hit again
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted nearly 400 Ukrainian drones over 14 regions and Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed from Kyiv in 2014.
Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, said in a statement its logistical facilities in the Voronezh region on the border with Ukraine came under attack and caught fire. It added that the fire was extinguished and goods stored there were “largely undamaged.”
Ukraine has repeatedly struck Wildberries warehouses and has also bombarded Russian oil facilities in what it says is a strategy to compel Putin to negotiate an end to the invasion.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil refinery in the city of Orsk in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from Ukraine, causing a fire.
The refinery, with an annual processing capacity of about 44 million barrels of crude oil, produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, among other products. The extent of the damage was being assessed, the military said.
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