In Rare Tribute to Slain Troops, Kim Jong-un Still Keeps Up Appearances
The event, which Mr. Kim and his teenage daughter and potential successor, Kim Ju-ae, attended on Sunday with a Russian delegation, featured Russian and North Korean art performances in Pyongyang. Both governments organized events to celebrate the first anniversary of a treaty of mutual defense and cooperation that Mr. Kim signed with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
It was also an occasion for Mr. Kim to highlight the contributions North Korea has made to Russia's war against Ukraine by showing his people, for the first time, images of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces.
North Korea has sent an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean troops, as well as large shipments of artillery shells, missiles and other weapons, to aid Russia's war efforts, according to South Korean, Ukrainian and U.S. officials. North Korean troops were believed to have suffered 4,700 casualties, including 600 deaths, South Korean intelligence officials told Parliament in April.
North Korea formally confirmed its troops' deployment and casualties in April when it promised a monument in their honor in Pyongyang, and flowers adorning 'the tombstones of the fallen soldiers.'
But it was not until Monday that the North's state television aired footage to the wider public of its soldiers fighting in Russia's war and the arrival of caskets containing those who were killed. The images flashed in the backdrop of the stage as a female singer sang 'the heroes will live on in our hearts forever.'
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CNN
18 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: A week after Trump embraced Putin, the Ukraine peace effort is going nowhere
Political messages don't get much blunter than the Russian missiles that slammed into an American-owned manufacturing firm overnight Wednesday in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles away from the frontline trenches of a war with no end in sight. The attack, part of the most intense Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine in more than a month, punctuated Moscow's brick-wall diplomacy, which is grinding President Donald Trump's peace effort to a halt. It's a week since Trump applauded Russian President Vladimir Putin down a red carpet in Alaska. The US president has orchestrated spectacles and statesmanlike photo-ops with European leaders, and the White House has proclaimed stunning breakthroughs. But the underlying realities of the war have barely changed. Russia is still bombing and droning Ukrainian civilians. It's erected new roadblocks to Trump's rush for a quick peace, contradicting US claims that it made concessions. What has been true in the three-and-a-half years since Russia's invasion is true now. Putin doesn't want to end the war. A summit between Ukrainian and Russian leaders — with Trump possibly on hand — that the administration predicted could come as soon as the end of this week remains a pipe dream. Russia's blocking maneuvers are led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a master of the obstructive arts of the Soviet Union, which he learned as a young diplomat before the Berlin Wall fell. On Thursday, Lavrov sought to reopen splits between the US and Europe that Putin pulled at in Alaska, condemning US allies. 'I see many signs that this activity is aimed precisely at undermining the progress that began to emerge, clearly emerge as a summit in Alaska,' Lavrov said. The Russian strategy is clear: Delay the diplomacy for as long as possible in order to allow Putin's bloody and slogging military strategy to eke out frontline gains. Ukraine's reality hasn't changed either. President Volodymyr Zelensky is still trying to appease Trump by appearing open to whatever he suggests. At least he escaped his trip to the White House on Monday without another disastrous blow-up. But he still can't accept the poisoned peace Putin offers. Ceding to Russian demands for strategic land handovers in the critical Donbas region would set up Moscow for a new blitzkrieg on Kyiv in future. It's not clear Trump gets this. Europe's top leaders staged an impressive show of unity at the White House on Monday. They desperately tried to peel away Trump from Putin after his flurry of concessions to the Russian leader. But Europe's plan for security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine looks as wooly as ever. And it can't happen without Trump. Any such plan would rest on two stipulations. One, that the UK and France, the leaders of the 'coalition of the willing,' would, if it came to it, be ready to go to war — with US help — against Russia to defend Ukraine. And two, that Moscow would sign a peace deal that binds Western troops to Ukraine in a mutual defense arrangement. Both scenarios are fanciful. Still, Trump deserves credit for injecting energy into the peace effort. He's the only leader who can talk to both sides and who has the power to summon a Russian president to the US and to convene allied leaders in Washington at the drop of a hat. And while Trump often tilts toward Putin rather than his Western allies, he hasn't forced Ukraine into the surrender many of his critics feared. His pressure on NATO allies to spend more on defense will help secure Europe's future. A genuine legacy achievement that could save thousands of lives in Ukraine is not out of the question for a president who craves respect and history's validation. And one week is also an absurdly short time to assess a peace effort. Peace drives in places such as Bosnia and Northern Ireland unfolded over months and years of complex diplomacy. But that attention to detail is exactly what Trump lacks. He and his envoy Steve Witkoff, a fellow real estate developer, speak offhandedly about Ukraine making land swaps — without apparently understanding the agonizing choices this would entail, which are rooted in national identity and the blood spilled to defend key regions. And perennial questions about Trump are cropping up again. Why won't he impose the US pressure that might force an easing of Russia's hardline position? And why does he invest trust in a Russian leader whose actions deserve the opposite? Trump's faith in Putin was laid bare in a hot mic moment at the White House on Monday. 'I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand that? As crazy as it sounds,' he told French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump on Thursday seemed to betray frustration with the deadlock, in a cryptic social media post that hinted at support for Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil. 'It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders (sic) country,' he wrote. 'It's like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense.' But one lesson of the past week is that it's unwise to emphasize any single comment by the president. He's been all over the map. At one point Monday, for example, he seemed to hint at openness to US troops serving in any post-war reassurance force in Ukraine. He quickly rowed back after uproar on MAGA media. A week after he met with Putin, however, Trump's reputation and the strongman image he incessantly cultivates are primed for embarrassment. He was played, again. This undercuts the core rationale of his presidency — that he's the world's greatest dealmaker. It's one thing to beat up on smaller nations with tariffs and to browbeat Europeans who rely on the US for defense. But Trump's meeting with Putin and his failure to get the better of China's leader Xi Jinping in a trade war suggests that the real hard men scoff at his 'Art of the Deal' mythology. Before he took toughened sanctions against Russia off the table — the very threat that probably lured Putin to Alaska — Trump complained that Putin was ready to talk peace but then sent a murderous volley of missiles into Ukraine. It's happening again. Russia overnight Wednesday killed nine civilians as 574 strike drones and 40 missiles targeted Ukraine, including as far west as the city of Lviv near the Polish border. And 19 people were injured in a strike against a US-owned manufacturing firm, Flex Ltd, in the western region of Zakarpattia. Coming from a nation as attuned to symbolism as Putin's Russia, this is unlikely to have been a coincidence. 'The Russians knew exactly where they were hitting,' Zelensky said in his nightly video address Thursday. 'We believe that this was a deliberate strike against American property here in Ukraine, against American investments.' The White House's spin this week seems designed to cover up the lack of progress. 'It's very important to remember that before President Trump's landslide victory last November, there was no end in sight to this bloodshed,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. 'Now, there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel and an opportunity for lasting peace. That's because President Trump is the peace president.' Leavitt slammed experts who questioned Trump's approach and accused journalists of sabotaging the process to hurt him. A failure to objectively assess the impediments to Trump's peace process is one reason why it risks collapsing. There is also the president's willingness to concede to Putin's positions without extracting flexibility in return, as well as the administration's repeated failure to accurately interpret Russian positions. One area where there has been progress is in the president's openness to act as a backup to a European security guarantee for Ukraine after the war, which could see US pilots flying air support missions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call on the issue Thursday with European national security advisers. Rubio, who also serves as US national security adviser, told his counterparts that the US was willing to play a limited role but that Europe should take the lead, according to a European diplomat on the call. Trump went into the summit a week ago bullishly predicting he'd forge the ceasefire that Ukraine and Europe say must be a precursor to serious diplomacy. But after a few hours with Putin, he'd changed his mind, reasoning that a push for a full, final peace deal was better. That just happens to be Russia's view, too. Over the weekend, Witkoff insisted on CNN's 'State of the Union' that Putin had signed off on 'robust' security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any final deal. Anyone with knowledge of recent history knew that sounded fishy. And so it proved, with Lavrov confirming Moscow is sticking to its longtime stance that it should be one of the guarantors — a risible suggestion following the invasion, but one that seeks to cement Putin's aim of making Ukraine a vassal state. Trump was on Monday speaking confidently about a meeting between Zelensky and Putin by the end of this week. And he said he'd probably join in. But now he's adopted Russia's line that a two-way Zelensky-Putin meeting is best. This would be risky for Ukraine: It's likely the Russian leader would use Trump's absence to portray Zelensky as intractable and to blame for stalling peace. And that's if Putin showed up. He's made clear he views Zelensky as an illegitimate leader and that he doesn't see Ukraine as an independent state. In any case, Lavrov is playing for time. On Thursday, he proposed a laborious sequence of 'conversations' between 'expert ministers' and 'appropriate recommendations' to consider a summit. Not everything that happens in a diplomatic process happens publicly. So despite the unpromising atmosphere, diligent behind-the-scenes work and pressure could begin to narrow some gaps. But a week after Alaska, Putin is showing he wants to fight on. Zelensky cannot fold, and Europe can't make peace on its own. It's up to Trump. Will he toughen up and throw himself into the details to forge a genuine peace process? The most accurate current diagnosis of the tortuous path ahead is that offered last Sunday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — one Trump aide not sugarcoating the situation. 'We're still a long ways off,' Rubio told ABC. 'I mean, we're not at the precipice of a peace agreement; we're not at the edge of one.' CNN's Clare Sebastian contributed reporting.
CNN
18 minutes ago
- CNN
How Russia's drone attacks have reshaped the war in Ukraine: An illustrated guide
Russia War in UkraineFacebookTweetLink Follow As Russia's war machine grinds forward in eastern Ukraine, there is another offensive being waged far beyond the front line. Russia is ramping up nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure, and as it rapidly increases its production of those weapons its strikes are intensifying. Many of the drones aren't particularly fast or high-tech, but they are cheap enough for the Kremlin to launch more than 700 in one night, in an effort to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses and decimate civilian morale, experts say. After obtaining Iranian designs for Shahed attack drones, Russia built its own massive factory to churn out thousands of these weapons each month. Its evolving tactics are forcing Ukraine to fight back with more expensive ammunition and innovations, as less costly methods of defense become less effective. The rapid increase in drone strikes shows how warfare has evolved to rely on these unmanned autonomous vehicles. Ukraine and Russia have been driven to improve drone capabilities to compensate for deficiencies in air force capabilities, a dynamic that isn't applicable to all Western powers. But experts say that the United States and its European NATO allies are actively working to improve drones and counter-drone operations to retain an advantage in any future conflicts. 'NATO will probably end up using drones on a large scale. Not at the same scale as Russia and Ukraine, because we've got these massive air forces that we've invested in and that can strike with a lot of power very quickly – but as a complement to that,' Robert Tollast, a research fellow focused on land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told CNN. Taiwan is already looking into developing large numbers of cheap attack drones, Tollast said. Non-state actors across the globe and drug cartels are also increasingly relying on drones. 'These are going to pose a huge challenge to unprepared armies around the world,' he added. This is how Russia's drone campaign operates – and how Ukraine is working to fight back. Russia is moving toward producing more than 6,000 Shahed-type drones each month, Ukraine's Defense Intelligence told CNN. And it's much cheaper to produce the attack drones inside Russia compared to earlier in the war, when Moscow was purchasing them from Tehran. 'In 2022, Russia paid an average of $200,000 for one such drone,' a Ukrainian Defense Intelligence source said. 'In 2025, that number came down to approximately $70,000,' due to the large-scale production at the Alabuga drone factory in Russia's Tatarstan region. But cost estimates vary greatly – the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a DC-based think tank, found that estimates for Shahed-136s ranged from $20,000 to $50,000 per drone. By comparison, a single surface-to-air missile interceptor can cost more than $3 million. That relatively low cost makes it possible for the Kremlin to ramp up its nightly drone attacks, as well as conduct more frequent large-scale attacks. Earlier in the war, major missile-and-drone salvos happened roughly once a month. Now, they occur every eight days on average, according to an analysis by CSIS. To many civilians, the constant threat of drone attacks is terrifying. Kyiv resident Bohdana Zhupanyna was heavily pregnant when her family's apartment was obliterated by a Russian drone strike in July. 'I'm trying to calm down, because such stress at nine months of pregnancy is very dangerous,' Zhupanyna, who has since delivered her baby safely, told CNN in the immediate aftermath of the strike. 'I lost a lot in this damn war. My father was killed by the hands of Russians, my apartment was destroyed by the hands of Russians, and my mother was almost killed by the hands of Russians.' And while Russia uses long-range drones to attack Ukrainian cities hundreds of miles from the front lines, civilians living in cities close to Russian-controlled areas describe being haunted by daily FPV drone attacks. Residents of the Kherson region previously told CNN that no target seems to be off limits, with reported FPV drone attacks on pedestrians, cars, buses and even ambulances. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, despite substantial evidence to the contrary. The percentage of drones that hit their targets has roughly doubled, with a hit rate of close to 20% since April, compared with 2024, when less than 10% hit targets on average, said Yasir Atalan, a data fellow at CSIS. And, the CSIS analysts wrote in their analysis, 'it doesn't matter if an individual Shahed hits its target. What matters is the compound effect the terror weapon has on civilians and the stress it places on air defenses.' Russia's tactics are about 'keeping the constant pressure,' Atalan told CNN. 'Their strategy is now focusing more and more on this sort of attrition.' Ukraine also counterattacks with FPV drones on the front lines and has attacked infrastructure and weapons facilities inside Russia using long-range drones. 'For every technological development, both sides are already looking for a counter-measure. And the innovation cycle is so fast that within (a) matter of two to three weeks, we already see a counter-adaptation to (a) technological breakthrough,' said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank. 'So, some of the approaches that might be effective currently might not be as effective in the coming months,' Stepanenko said. Now, both Ukraine and Russia are working to develop AI-powered drones that can make their own decisions on the battlefield, as well as creating interceptor drones that could be deployed as a cheaper method of countering aerial assaults than firing missiles, according to ISW. 'There are numerous reports about Ukrainians testing some of these drones, but we haven't seen them deployed at scale,' Stepanenko said. 'The development of interceptor drones would free up Ukrainian capabilities and also help Ukrainian forces preserve some of (their) air defense missiles for missile strikes.' CNN's Toby Hancock, Henrik Pettersson and Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report.
CNN
33 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: A week after Trump embraced Putin, the Ukraine peace effort is going nowhere
Political messages don't get much blunter than the Russian missiles that slammed into an American-owned manufacturing firm overnight Wednesday in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles away from the frontline trenches of a war with no end in sight. The attack, part of the most intense Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine in more than a month, punctuated Moscow's brick-wall diplomacy, which is grinding President Donald Trump's peace effort to a halt. It's a week since Trump applauded Russian President Vladimir Putin down a red carpet in Alaska. The US president has orchestrated spectacles and statesmanlike photo-ops with European leaders, and the White House has proclaimed stunning breakthroughs. But the underlying realities of the war have barely changed. Russia is still bombing and droning Ukrainian civilians. It's erected new roadblocks to Trump's rush for a quick peace, contradicting US claims that it made concessions. What has been true in the three-and-a-half years since Russia's invasion is true now. Putin doesn't want to end the war. A summit between Ukrainian and Russian leaders — with Trump possibly on hand — that the administration predicted could come as soon as the end of this week remains a pipe dream. Russia's blocking maneuvers are led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a master of the obstructive arts of the Soviet Union, which he learned as a young diplomat before the Berlin Wall fell. On Thursday, Lavrov sought to reopen splits between the US and Europe that Putin pulled at in Alaska, condemning US allies. 'I see many signs that this activity is aimed precisely at undermining the progress that began to emerge, clearly emerge as a summit in Alaska,' Lavrov said. The Russian strategy is clear: Delay the diplomacy for as long as possible in order to allow Putin's bloody and slogging military strategy to eke out frontline gains. Ukraine's reality hasn't changed either. President Volodymyr Zelensky is still trying to appease Trump by appearing open to whatever he suggests. At least he escaped his trip to the White House on Monday without another disastrous blow-up. But he still can't accept the poisoned peace Putin offers. Ceding to Russian demands for strategic land handovers in the critical Donbas region would set up Moscow for a new blitzkrieg on Kyiv in future. It's not clear Trump gets this. Europe's top leaders staged an impressive show of unity at the White House on Monday. They desperately tried to peel away Trump from Putin after his flurry of concessions to the Russian leader. But Europe's plan for security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine looks as wooly as ever. And it can't happen without Trump. Any such plan would rest on two stipulations. One, that the UK and France, the leaders of the 'coalition of the willing,' would, if it came to it, be ready to go to war — with US help — against Russia to defend Ukraine. And two, that Moscow would sign a peace deal that binds Western troops to Ukraine in a mutual defense arrangement. Both scenarios are fanciful. Still, Trump deserves credit for injecting energy into the peace effort. He's the only leader who can talk to both sides and who has the power to summon a Russian president to the US and to convene allied leaders in Washington at the drop of a hat. And while Trump often tilts toward Putin rather than his Western allies, he hasn't forced Ukraine into the surrender many of his critics feared. His pressure on NATO allies to spend more on defense will help secure Europe's future. A genuine legacy achievement that could save thousands of lives in Ukraine is not out of the question for a president who craves respect and history's validation. And one week is also an absurdly short time to assess a peace effort. Peace drives in places such as Bosnia and Northern Ireland unfolded over months and years of complex diplomacy. But that attention to detail is exactly what Trump lacks. He and his envoy Steve Witkoff, a fellow real estate developer, speak offhandedly about Ukraine making land swaps — without apparently understanding the agonizing choices this would entail, which are rooted in national identity and the blood spilled to defend key regions. And perennial questions about Trump are cropping up again. Why won't he impose the US pressure that might force an easing of Russia's hardline position? And why does he invest trust in a Russian leader whose actions deserve the opposite? Trump's faith in Putin was laid bare in a hot mic moment at the White House on Monday. 'I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand that? As crazy as it sounds,' he told French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump on Thursday seemed to betray frustration with the deadlock, in a cryptic social media post that hinted at support for Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil. 'It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders (sic) country,' he wrote. 'It's like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense.' But one lesson of the past week is that it's unwise to emphasize any single comment by the president. He's been all over the map. At one point Monday, for example, he seemed to hint at openness to US troops serving in any post-war reassurance force in Ukraine. He quickly rowed back after uproar on MAGA media. A week after he met with Putin, however, Trump's reputation and the strongman image he incessantly cultivates are primed for embarrassment. He was played, again. This undercuts the core rationale of his presidency — that he's the world's greatest dealmaker. It's one thing to beat up on smaller nations with tariffs and to browbeat Europeans who rely on the US for defense. But Trump's meeting with Putin and his failure to get the better of China's leader Xi Jinping in a trade war suggests that the real hard men scoff at his 'Art of the Deal' mythology. Before he took toughened sanctions against Russia off the table — the very threat that probably lured Putin to Alaska — Trump complained that Putin was ready to talk peace but then sent a murderous volley of missiles into Ukraine. It's happening again. Russia overnight Wednesday killed nine civilians as 574 strike drones and 40 missiles targeted Ukraine, including as far west as the city of Lviv near the Polish border. And 19 people were injured in a strike against a US-owned manufacturing firm, Flex Ltd, in the western region of Zakarpattia. Coming from a nation as attuned to symbolism as Putin's Russia, this is unlikely to have been a coincidence. 'The Russians knew exactly where they were hitting,' Zelensky said in his nightly video address Thursday. 'We believe that this was a deliberate strike against American property here in Ukraine, against American investments.' The White House's spin this week seems designed to cover up the lack of progress. 'It's very important to remember that before President Trump's landslide victory last November, there was no end in sight to this bloodshed,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. 'Now, there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel and an opportunity for lasting peace. That's because President Trump is the peace president.' Leavitt slammed experts who questioned Trump's approach and accused journalists of sabotaging the process to hurt him. A failure to objectively assess the impediments to Trump's peace process is one reason why it risks collapsing. There is also the president's willingness to concede to Putin's positions without extracting flexibility in return, as well as the administration's repeated failure to accurately interpret Russian positions. One area where there has been progress is in the president's openness to act as a backup to a European security guarantee for Ukraine after the war, which could see US pilots flying air support missions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call on the issue Thursday with European national security advisers. Rubio, who also serves as US national security adviser, told his counterparts that the US was willing to play a limited role but that Europe should take the lead, according to a European diplomat on the call. Trump went into the summit a week ago bullishly predicting he'd forge the ceasefire that Ukraine and Europe say must be a precursor to serious diplomacy. But after a few hours with Putin, he'd changed his mind, reasoning that a push for a full, final peace deal was better. That just happens to be Russia's view, too. Over the weekend, Witkoff insisted on CNN's 'State of the Union' that Putin had signed off on 'robust' security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any final deal. Anyone with knowledge of recent history knew that sounded fishy. And so it proved, with Lavrov confirming Moscow is sticking to its longtime stance that it should be one of the guarantors — a risible suggestion following the invasion, but one that seeks to cement Putin's aim of making Ukraine a vassal state. Trump was on Monday speaking confidently about a meeting between Zelensky and Putin by the end of this week. And he said he'd probably join in. But now he's adopted Russia's line that a two-way Zelensky-Putin meeting is best. This would be risky for Ukraine: It's likely the Russian leader would use Trump's absence to portray Zelensky as intractable and to blame for stalling peace. And that's if Putin showed up. He's made clear he views Zelensky as an illegitimate leader and that he doesn't see Ukraine as an independent state. In any case, Lavrov is playing for time. On Thursday, he proposed a laborious sequence of 'conversations' between 'expert ministers' and 'appropriate recommendations' to consider a summit. Not everything that happens in a diplomatic process happens publicly. So despite the unpromising atmosphere, diligent behind-the-scenes work and pressure could begin to narrow some gaps. But a week after Alaska, Putin is showing he wants to fight on. Zelensky cannot fold, and Europe can't make peace on its own. It's up to Trump. Will he toughen up and throw himself into the details to forge a genuine peace process? The most accurate current diagnosis of the tortuous path ahead is that offered last Sunday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — one Trump aide not sugarcoating the situation. 'We're still a long ways off,' Rubio told ABC. 'I mean, we're not at the precipice of a peace agreement; we're not at the edge of one.' CNN's Clare Sebastian contributed reporting.
