Zelenskyy says ex-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to head delegation for Russia talks
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Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Russia's air attack on Kyiv leaves five people injured, Ukraine's military says
MOSCO: A Russian air attack on Kyiv has left at least five people injured and damaged a residential building, the head of the military administration of the Ukrainian capital, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Monday on the Telegram messaging app.
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Powerful sister of north korean leader kim rejects south korea's appeasement overture
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rebuffed an appeasement overture by South Korea's new liberal government, saying Monday that North Korea has no interests in talks with South Korea, no matter what proposal its rival offers. Kim Yo-jong's comments suggest, again, that North Korea, now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia, has no intentions of returning to diplomacy with South Korea and the US anytime soon. But experts said North Korea could change its course if it thinks it cannot maintain the same booming ties with Russia when the Russia-Ukraine war nears an end. 'We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it, and there is neither a reason to meet nor an issue to be discussed with South Korea,' Kim Yo-jong said in a statement carried by state media. It's North Korea's first official statement on the government of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, which took office in early June. In an effort to improve badly frayed ties with North Korea, Lee's government has halted anti-Pyongyang frontline loudspeaker broadcasts, taken steps to ban activists from flying balloons with propaganda leaflets across the border, and repatriated North Koreans who drifted south in wooden boats months earlier. Kim Yo-jong called such steps 'sincere efforts' by Lee's government to develop ties. But she said the Lee government won't be much different from its predecessors, citing what it calls their 'blind trust' to the alliance with the US and attempt to 'stand in confrontation' with North Korea. She mentioned August's annual South Korea-US military drills in August, which North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal. North Korea has been shunning talks with South Korea and the US since leader Kim Jong-un's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019 due to wrangling over international sanctions. North Korea has since focused on building more powerful nuclear weapons targeting its rivals. North Korea now prioritizes cooperation with Russia by sending troops and conventional weapons to support its war against Ukraine, likely in return for economic and military assistance. South Korea, the US, and others say Russia may give North Korea sensitive technologies that can enhance its nuclear and missile programs. Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has repeatedly boasted of his personal ties with Kim Jong-un and expressed intent to resume diplomacy with him. But North Korea hasn't publicly responded to Trump's overture. In early 2024, Kim Jong-un ordered the rewriting of the constitution to remove the long-running state goal of a peaceful Korean unification and cement South Korea as an invariable principal enemy. That caught many foreign experts by surprise because it was seen as eliminating the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided Koreas and breaking away with his predecessors' long-cherished dreams of peacefully achieving a unified Korea on the North's terms. Many experts say Kim likely aims to guard against South Korean cultural influence and bolster his family's dynastic rule. Others say Kim wants legal room to use his nuclear weapons against South Korea by making it a foreign enemy state, not a partner for potential unification, which shares a sense of national homogeneity.
Al Arabiya
14 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Russia scales down celebrations honoring its navy as Ukraine launches more drone attacks
Russia on Sunday scaled down the festivities honoring its navy, citing security concerns as continuing Ukrainian drone attacks posed a challenge to the Kremlin. Russian authorities canceled the parades of warships in St. Petersburg, in the Kaliningrad region on the Baltic, and in the far-eastern port of Vladivostok that are usually held to mark the annual Navy Day celebrations. Asked about the reason for the cancellation of the parade in St. Petersburg even as President Vladimir Putin arrived in his home city to visit the navy headquarters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it's linked to the overall situation – security reasons which are above all else. The Russian Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 99 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight. Later in the day, officials reported more drones shot down near St. Petersburg. A woman was injured by drone fragments in the Lomonosov region, according to the local authorities. St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport suspended dozens of flights early Sunday because of the drone threat. On a trip to St. Petersburg, Putin visited the historic Admiralty building to receive reports on four-day naval maneuvers that wrapped up Sunday. The July Storm exercise involved 150 warships from the Baltics to the Pacific. Putin vowed to build more warships and intensify the navy's training, adding that the navy's strike power and combat capability will rise to a qualitatively new level. Reducing the scale of the Navy Day celebrations reflects Moscow's worries about Ukraine's sweeping drone attacks across the country. In a series of strikes earlier in the war, now in its fourth year, Ukraine sank several Russian warships in the Blacks Sea, crippling Moscow's naval capability and forcing it to redeploy its fleet from Russia-occupied Crimea to Novorossiysk. And in an audacious June 1 attack codenamed Spiderweb, Ukraine used drones to hit several Russian airbases hosting long-range bombers across Russia from the Arctic Kola Peninsula to Siberia. The drones were launched from trucks covertly placed near the bases, taking the Russian military by surprise in a humiliating blow to the Kremlin. The raid destroyed or damaged many of the bombers that had been used by Moscow to launch aerial attacks on Ukraine, providing a major morale boost for Kyiv at a time when Kyiv's undermanned and under-gunned forces are facing Russian attacks along the 1000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Russia continued to batter Ukraine with drone and missile strikes Sunday. In Sumy, in Ukraine's northeast, a drone attack damaged civil infrastructure objects, an administrative building, and non-residential premises, leaving three people wounded. Elsewhere in the region, two men died after being blown up by a landmine, and another woman was injured from a drone attack on another community in the region, the regional military administration said.
