Zelensky: North Korean missiles on Zaporizhzhia, six dead

Six people were killed and nineteen injured in an attack on Zaporizhzhia, in southern Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky held Moscow responsible and said that among the systems used were ballistic missiles of North Korean manufacture, alongside Zircon hypersonic missiles and guided aerial bombs. He described the action as a brutal attack, calculated to cause the greatest possible damage.

On the same day the military administration of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region reported three dead and five injured across five districts hit by Russian drones and artillery.

Moscow's account differs. Russia said the overnight strikes were directed at military industry plants and at transport and logistics hubs in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia, naming among the targets the sorting complex of the delivery company Nova Poshta and the Zaporizhstal steelworks.

The war's Asian front

The claim about North Korean missiles fits a line Zelensky has pursued for some time, so far without making evidence public. According to the Ukrainian president, Pyongyang has already delivered missiles to Russia and plans to transfer between thirty thousand and fifty thousand soldiers there, with consequences that in his view also concern Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and other countries in the region.

On that ground Ukraine has achieved little, however. South Korea has turned down the request for military cooperation and for help with air defence. An official at Seoul's foreign ministry recalled that the government has supported Kyiv in several areas and will continue to weigh possible measures, but the position remains to supply humanitarian aid only, without lethal weapons or defence systems.

On the other side, Ukrainian forces are reported to have struck the Orsknefteorgsintez refinery near the Russian city of Orsk, which has a capacity of around six million barrels a year. A fire also broke out at another refinery in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia's Far East: the causes have not been established.