North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un with troops during an inspection at a military training base at an undisclosed location in North Korea, October 2, 2024
Sunday’s Coverage: Kyiv Captures 2 North Korean POWs
Map: Institute for the Study of War
UPDATE 1801 GMT:
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a six-word reply to Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico, who posted a five-minute video declaring Kyiv an unreliable partner and accusing Zelensky of pressuring European leaders: “He goes around Europe, just begging and blackmailing others, asking for money.”
Ok. Come to Kyiv on Friday. pic.twitter.com/9lOSLCR7FD
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 13, 2025
Fico is under pressure from Slovakia’s opposition after failing to prepare for the cutoff of the transit of Russian gas across Ukraine on January 1.
Kyiv did not renew the contract with Russian State company Gazprom because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
European and Ukrainian officials noted that other countries who had taken Russia gas, such as Hungary and Czechia, had prepared alternatives.
Fico has threatened to halt humanitarian aid to Kyiv, cut or cancel social benefits for Ukrainian refugees, and stop emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine.
UPDATE 1600 GMT:
Ukraine has stopped production at its coking coal mine, which feeds the steel industry, in Pokrovsk in the east of the country because the nearby Russian offensive.
Pokrovsk is Ukraine’s only mine which produces the necessary coking coal.
Russian forces have tried for months to overrun the logistics hub in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian military analysts DeepState said Russian troops are less than 2 km (1.24 miles) from one of the mine shafts.
Ukraine produced about 3.5 million tons of coke in 2023. The steelmakers’ union said last year that closure closure of the Pokrovsk mine could cause steel production to slump to between 2 million and 3 million metric tons in 2025 from 7.6 million in 2024.
UPDATE 1507 GMT:
Three tankers, carrying more than 2 million barrels of Russian crude oil, are floating off China’s coast after they were targeted with US sanctions last week.
On Friday, the US and UK cited 182 vessels in Russia’s “shadow fleet”, Russian oil companies, and energy officials.
The Huihai Pacific, initially headed for Dongjiakou in Shandong Province, is now offshore. The Mermar and Olia, bound for Yantai, are sitting in the Yellow Sea.
Last week the Shandong Port Group prohibited U.S.-sanctioned tankers from entering its ports in the province in eastern China.
A “senior Indian official” said India will also not allow US-sanctioned tankers to enter its ports with Russian oil. Only those vessels that were chartered before January 10 will be allowed to unload, provided that they do so by March 12. Indian banks will now require certificates of origin to ensure that the oil comes from suppliers who are not sanctioned.
UPDATE 1450 GMT:
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces say they killed 17 North Korean soldiers in repelling an assault in the Kursk region in western Russia.
The Ukrainian military did not give the date of the battle but said it lasted from morning until night. It released a video showing dead and dying North Korean soldiers.
A Ukrainian mopping-up group encountered one surviving North Korean fighter who tried to trap the Ukrainians and then detonated a grenade to avoid capture, fatally injuring himself.
UPDATE 1439 GMT:
The European Union is allocating an additional €140 million ($143 million) in humanitarian assistance for Ukraine.
The European Commission said the EU will also allocate €8 million ($8.16 million) to Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova to support Ukrainian refugees and their host communities.
The assistance to the two countries brings the EU total during Russia’s 34 1/2-month invasion to more than €1.1 billion ($1.12 billion).
The Commission said:
The funding will be directed towards emergency assistance, including food, shelter, clean water, healthcare, and winter protection…supporting vulnerable populations in the heavily war impacted regions of eastern and southern Ukraine.
As Russia continues its cruelty in the dead of winter, the EU is intensifying its support to keep the lights on and homes warm.
UPDATE 0749 GMT:
After five days, a large fire at a major Russian oil depot — set by a Ukrainian drone strike — has reportedly been extinguished.
Roman Busargin, the governor of the Saratov region in southwest Russia, thanked emergency and rescue workers. He gave no other details about last Wednesday’s strike.
The Kristall oil depot supplies Russia’s Engels airbase, from which Moscow carries out attacks across Ukraine.
Ukraine’s VChK-OGPU project, citing insider sources, claims, “The tank farm, which stored approximately 800,000 tons of fuel for the military airfield, has been rendered inoperable.”
The site said three 120,000-cubic-meter tanks were destroyed, and the other three sustained significant damage.
“The destruction of the oil depot creates serious logistical problems for the strategic aviation of the Russian occupiers and significantly reduces their ability to strike at peaceful Ukrainian cities and civilian objects,” said Ukraine’s General Staff.
UPDATE 0715 GMT:
For the first time, Russia’s State security service FSB has declared that a Russian media outlet is “terrorist”.
Komi Daily, based in the Komi Republic in northwest Russia is included in a registry of almost 200 organizations cited for alleged ties to the “Forum of Free States of Post-Russia”. The FSB said the Forum is “an international organization created in the form of a social movement”.
Komi Daily denies any involvement in the Forum. The outlet calls for the autonomy of Komi and for the income from Komi’s resources to remain in the Republic.
In November 2024, the Russian Supreme Court declared the Forum and 172 of its “structural divisions” to be terrorist and banned it, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The list of “terrorist” grups includes movements for self-determination of Russian regions; initiatives to study the history, culture and languages of the peoples of Russia; regional anti-war movements; and military formations from Russian regions participating on Ukraine’s side during Vladimir Putin’s 34 1/2-month invasion.
UPDATE 0708 GMT:
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has denied reports that Chancellor Olaf Scholz is blocking a proposal for an additional €3 billion ($3.09 billion) in military aid for Ukraine.
Pistorius said in an interview published on Monday:
There is no blockade. We have prepared a new aid package for Ukraine in the Defense Ministry.
[It] must now be decided politically….As soon as all questions have been clarified, I expect a corresponding decision.
Der Spiegel reported last Thursday, from undisclosed sources, that Scholz had rejected the package. The Chancellor supposedly claimed that Germany’s existing allocation of €4 billion euros ($4.1 billion) for 2025, as well as funds from the $50 billion G7 loan financed by frozen Russian assets, was sufficient.
UPDATE 0644 GMT:
A local woman has been killed by Russian strikes on the Ukraine-controlled part of the Kursk region in western Russia on Saturday evening.
“Russian aviation carried out two airstrikes on the area of the boarding school in Sudzha, as a result of which one woman suffered a laceration wound to her arm, and died in the morning,” Ukrainian army spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said.
In the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, Russian drone attacks injured eight people in Kherson city and a nearby village.
In Sumy city in the north, debris from an Iran-type attack drone set a large fire at a children’s health and wellness center. No casualties were reported.
The attacks left 185 settlements in the Sumy region without power.
On the evening of 12 January, Russian forces struck a residential sector and a children's health center in Sumy. No one was reported injured.
Fragments from a Shahed drone hit the territory of the children's health center, resulting in a fire. Rescuers were deployed to several… pic.twitter.com/KIMj2SZToz
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) January 13, 2025
Earlier on Sunday, a drone attack on a bus injured two civilians in the village of Myropillia.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered an exchange of two captured North Korean soldiers for Ukrainian POWs held in Russia.
On Saturday, Ukranian officials announced the capture, the first of around 11,000 North Korean troops deployed since autumn, in the Kursk region in western Russia. The two men were taken to Kyiv by the State security service SBU and treated in hospital.
Zelensky posted on Sunday:
Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong Un’s soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia.
For those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available. In particular, those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given that opportunity.
In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It’s only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others. There should be no doubt left in the world that the Russian army is dependent on military assistance from North… pic.twitter.com/4RyCfUoHoC
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 12, 2025
One of the men said he wanted to return to North Korea while the other said he wanted to remain in Ukraine, according to translated comments from their interrogations.
South Korea: 3,000 North Korean Casualties in Kursk
At least 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and another 2,700 wounded in Kursk, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said on Monday.
The NIS attributed the high casualties to the soldiers’ “lack of understanding of modern warfare”, including their “useless” attempts to shoot down long-range drones.
North Korean officials have emphasized that soldiers must kill themselves to avoid being captured alive by the Ukrainian military, the NIS claimed.
Zelensky said last Thursday that the North Koreans have suffered 4,000 casualties.