The United States has new intelligence that shows arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are advancing, as Moscow turns to pariah nations for weapons to fight the war in Ukraine, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.
The spokesman, John F. Kirby of the National Security Council, said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had recently exchanged letters and that the Russian defense minister’s recent visit to Pyongyang included discussions on arms deals.
“Following these negotiations, high-level discussions may continue in coming months,” Mr. Kirby told reporters, describing the talks as “actively advancing.”
He declined to explain how the United States obtained the intelligence, saying only that it had been monitoring the situation “through a variety of means.”
Mr. Kirby’s remarks were the latest case of the administration declassifying intelligence in an effort to disrupt or deter action, though the past cases — revealing Russia’s war plans, for example, or arms deals with Iran — have not stopped those plans from going through.
U.S. officials have said that global sanctions have severely restricted Russia’s supply chains and forced Moscow to look for other sources of weapons as the war in Ukraine grinds into its 19th month. The White House has accused North Korea of supplying rockets and missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine, which Pyongyang has denied. Russia has also received shipments of Iranian-made drones.
North Korea and Iran are largely cut off from international commerce because of American and international sanctions, meaning neither country has much to lose by making deals with Russia.
The United States has expressed concerns in the past that China was considering giving military aid to Moscow for the war in Ukraine. But Beijing has been reluctant to supply significant arms to Russia, even while it buys its oil and sells dual-use electronics and other technology.
Mr. Kirby noted that North Korea had said publicly, on numerous occasions, that it would not sell ammunition to Russia, and he emphasized that any such deal would violate several U.N. Security Council resolutions.
In March, the United States announced sanctions against a Slovakian national accused of trying to broker a weapons deal in which Russia would offer North Korea food in exchange for munitions. Mr. Kirby said on Wednesday that the letters between Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim were “surface level” and did not contain any details about a food-for-fuel deal.
But he said the current talks could involve supplying “significant quantities and multiple types of munitions.”
The talks come at a crucial moment in the war. The Ukrainian military launched a counteroffensive against Russia this summer but took heavy losses, leading to a change in strategy from head-on assaults to a war of attrition.
“What we’re seeing in this counteroffensive is it’s a gunfight and both sides are blazing away with artillery,” Mr. Kirby said. “So we know that artillery is one of those items, but it’s multiple levels of types of munitions.”
Mr. Kirby said the United States considered Russia’s pursuit of artillery from “rogue regimes” to be a sign of “desperation and weakness” on Mr. Putin’s part.
“Mr. Putin has achieved — let me count it — zero of his strategic goals in Ukraine,” Mr. Kirby said.
This week, the United States announced its latest round of military assistance to Ukraine, which included ammunition and ambulances. Earlier this month, President Biden asked Congress to approve another $24 billion to aid Ukraine in the war.
Also on Wednesday, North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently a reaction to joint military drills by the United States and South Korea.
In a joint statement on behalf of the United States, Japan, South Korea and Britain, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on North Korea to “refrain from engaging in provocative behavior and instead accept one of our numerous offers for dialogue.”
The governor of Pskov, Russia, shared videos on his Telegram account showing smoke rising from the city’s airport and rounds being fired into the sky.CreditCredit...Mikhail Vedernikov via Storyful
Exploding drones attacked six regions of Russia overnight Wednesday and damaged four military cargo planes at an airfield hundreds of miles from Ukraine, Russian officials said, suggesting that, after months of enduring missile and drone strikes with little recourse, Ukraine is increasingly able to hit back deep inside Russia.
In what appeared to be the most successful of the strikes, four Russian Il-76 military cargo planes were damaged while parked near a runway at an airfield in Pskov, 30 miles from the border with Estonia, a NATO member. The Russian regional governor posted video footage of smoke billowing from an airfield where he said drones had damaged the planes, although the extent was unclear.
Russia also launched a wave of attacks on Ukraine early Wednesday that targeted at least three regions. Ukraine’s Air Force said it had shot down 43 of 44 missiles and drones, although officials in Kyiv, the capital, said that falling debris from drones or missiles shot down by air defense systems killed at least two people.
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Clearing debris from a damaged residential building after a Russian strike in Kyiv on Wednesday.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
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Officials in Kyiv said that falling debris from drones or missiles shot down by air defense systems killed at least two people.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
Local officials said the barrage was the most significant in the Kyiv region in months. But the volley of drones exploding in Russia was exceptional, and appeared to be the result of a long effort by Ukraine to answer Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, infrastructure and military targets.
While Ukrainian officials did not claim responsibility for the overnight strikes, in keeping with their practice involving attacks inside Russia, they have made it increasingly clear that they view bringing the war home to ordinary Russians to be a legitimate tactic against Moscow’s invasion.
“We all went through these attacks by Russia,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, the former secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, said in an interview on Wednesday. “We understand how destructive they can be. It’s important to be able to retaliate.”
The attacks have destroyed valuable military equipment, although they have done little significant damage to Russia’s overall military might. They are also intended to pierce Russian propaganda by showing Russians that their military is vulnerable, and to bolster morale among Ukrainians wanting payback.
On Wednesday, the Russian governor of the Pskov region, Mikhail Vedernikov, posted videos on the Telegram messaging app that show a large nighttime fire with billowing smoke, and what appeared to be air defenses being fired at incoming drones.
He later wrote that a review of the airfield had been conducted and that “everything is in order,” adding that operations would resume there on Thursday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not address the event in Pskov. It said that at least eight Ukrainian drones had been intercepted over five regions south and southwest of Moscow. The drones were shot down in the Bryansk, Oryol, Kaluga and Ryazan regions, as well as in the Ruza district on the outskirts of the Moscow region, the ministry said.
In Ukraine, explosions and the roar of launching air defense missiles shook Kyiv around 5 a.m. The capital was targeted with missiles and drones in the largest attack since the spring, Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said in a statement.
A barrage of drones flew at the city, later followed by missiles, more than 20 of which were shot down, he said. Two people in the city were killed by debris, according to Mr. Popko and the city’s mayor.
Marc Santora and Valeriya Safronova contributed reporting.
A woman walking past a damaged building in the Russian-occupied city of Tokmak, in January, in a photograph from Russian state news media.Credit...Alexander Galperin/Sputnik, via Associated Press
As Ukrainian forces push forward to try to secure the patch of land that they have retaken in the south, a strategic target looms: the city of Tokmak, a road-and-rail hub whose recapture could eventually help Kyiv drive deep enough into Russian-controlled territory to split Moscow’s forces and supply lines.
Ukraine’s military said on Monday that its forces had breached Russia’s initial lines of defense in the area and recaptured Robotyne, a village that connects to Tokmak — 15 miles farther to the south — by a highway, though the two are separated by yet more layers of robust Russian defenses.
Ukraine started its long-awaited counteroffensive in June, and its successes have been measured in increments. In a sign of the daunting task, it took months of fierce combat to seize Robotyne, and Ukrainian officials said in recent days that they were still securing positions in the village as they demine the area and look to edge farther south.
“We had successes and are consolidating the achieved positions,” Andriy Kovalev, a spokesman for the military’s general staff said on Tuesday, adding that Ukrainian troops were advancing toward Verbove, a village about five miles southeast of Robotyne. His claim could not be independently verified.
Controlling Robotyne and its surrounding area could allow Ukraine to use it as a base to prepare and launch attacks on targets farther south. Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, said this week that consolidating their foothold in Robotyne would mean that Ukrainian forces could bring more troops to the area, providing greater opportunities for maneuver.
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Damage in Robotyne, Ukraine, last week.Credit...Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
Tokmak is a key target for the Ukrainian Army because it is the crossing point for five main roads in the Zaporizhzhia region, including two that connect to the cities of Melitopol and Berdiansk, near the Sea of Azov. Reaching the Sea of Azov would allow Ukraine to drive a wedge into the so-called land bridge between Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea, a link that is vital to Moscow’s supply routes.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said in a speech to French diplomats in Paris on Tuesday that after securing the flanks of Robotyne, “we are opening the way to Tokmak and, ultimately, Melitopol and the border with Crimea.”
But Mr. Shtupun, the army spokesman, acknowledged that the push toward Tokmak would not be easy. “I think the Russians will not leave this settlement easily, and Ukrainian forces will have to fight for it,” he said.
Satellite images show that to reach Tokmak, Ukrainian forces would have to breach two more formidable Russian defensive lines made up of trenches, dense minefields, earthen berms and anti-tank barriers — part of an extensive network of defenses that military analysts say is the biggest in Europe since World War II.
Securing Tokmak, a city that had a prewar population of about 30,000 people, also poses its own challenges. Once through the anti-tank traps surrounding the city, Ukrainian forces would have to fight through tall buildings and narrow side streets in close-quarter combat that would most likely be deadly for both sides.
Kyiv’s troops are still a long way from Tokmak, but Ukrainian officials claim that recent advances appear to have caused concern among the occupying Russian authorities there. On Tuesday, Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor in exile of Melitopol, said that, according to local residents, some Russian officials were leaving Tokmak as the fighting drew closer.
The Ukrainians “are forcing the occupiers to leave Tokmak,” Mr. Fedorov wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. The claim could not be independently verified.
Harvesting wheat from a field near the city of Bila Tserkva, in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, this month.Credit...Ed Ram/Getty Images
A newly released U.S. intelligence report warns that disruptions to the world’s grain supply caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mean that poorer countries will probably struggle to provide food to their populations through at least the end of this year, given volatile agricultural prices and rapid rises in the price of fertilizer and fuel across the globe.
The report was written by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June and released on Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee. It found that the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had allowed Ukraine to ship millions of tons of grain despite the war, had lowered food prices at the end of 2022 globally. The report anticipated, however, that the deal would likely end. It did so in July, when Russia abandoned the agreement, complaining that it was being carried out unfairly as it looked to further squeeze the Ukrainian economy.
The report also builds on prior U.S. warnings that the Russian military has stolen Ukrainian grain to boost Russia’s exports. It said that, according to an analysis of satellite imagery, six million tons of wheat were harvested in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and that occupation governments were seizing grain from private companies. The confiscated grain is mixed with Russian-grown crops, complicating estimates of how much food is being stolen by Russia, it said.
Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat of Illinois who had pushed for the report to be written, said on Wednesday that Russia’s withdrawal from the grain deal had highlighted the need for a more global effort to counteract the “risk of starvation” caused by the war.
“This report confirms that Russia has weaponized access to food at the expense of many countries and millions of the world’s most vulnerable people,” Mr. Krishnamoorthi said.
The report said that many poor countries, already battered by the Covid pandemic and burdened by high debt levels, had been unable to respond to the food crisis. It raised the prospect that poorer countries with weak governments, particularly nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, will struggle to provide “sufficient and affordable food to their populations through the end of the year.” The report also highlighted risk for Egypt, the world’s single largest wheat importer.
Ukraine and Russia together export 34 percent of the wheat and 17 percent of the corn that enters global markets. The war disrupted both countries’ production and exports, leading the United Nations food price index to reach its highest level since its inception in 1996. Fertilizer prices also reached near record levels.
The report said that future food prices would depend on whether Russia rejoined the deal. But Ukrainian farmers have already planted between 30 and 35 percent less barley, corn and wheat this year compared to a five-year average of previous years, it said.
While Kyiv has not typically claimed responsibility publicly for strikes in Russia, drones are hitting sites from which Russia has launched attacks against Ukraine, including airfields and other military and logistics targets such as oil depots, security headquarters and government offices.
Russia’s Pskov region, where an airfield was struck on Wednesday, is home to a well-known paratrooper division of the country’s military that was implicated in last year’s massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha. To the west, the Pskov region borders Estonia and Latvia, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
A flurry of experimentation by Ukrainian drone manufacturers is now coming to fruition, Oleksandr Danylyuk, the former secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, said in an interview on Wednesday. He did not claim Ukrainian responsibility for the overnight attack.
Ukraine has half a dozen or so models of long-range drones under development, including some that can fly more than 1,000 kilometers, or 620 miles, Ukrainian designers have said. The Pskov region is more than 600 kilometers, or 400 miles, from the Ukrainian border.
“They launched a boomerang, and it will fly back to them,” Mr. Danylyuk said of long-range missile and drone strikes. “Russians, not just in the Kremlin, not just on the border with Ukraine, all Russians need to understand that a war is taking place.”
American officials have said the drone attacks are intended to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back, even as its counteroffensive to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of Ukraine moves at a grinding pace. Another objective, as top Ukrainian officials have said, is to bring the war home to the people of Russia.
But the long-range strikes also appear to be helping the morale of soldiers at the front. Serhiy, a marine fighting in southern Ukraine who asked to be identified only by his first name for security reasons, said that Ukraine is expanding the reach of domestic weapons.
“The farther we can reach, the quicker the Russians realize that we can do real harm,” he said.
A damaged skyscraper in Moscow after a reported drone attack last week.Credit...Associated Press
Though Russia and Ukraine possess significant air defense capabilities, both countries have struggled to fend off attacks from small drones. For years, Washington has spent significant resources researching how to better defend against the threat, which the Pentagon also considers formidable.
“A small drone flying close to the earth and flying quickly is very difficult to pick up if you are carrying out counter-drone efforts — and that’s just as true for Moscow as it is for Washington,” said Seth G. Jones, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington, said in an interview earlier this month. “Frankly, they are pretty perplexing challenges for any state to defend against.”
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been notable for its use of drones, from small ones that are being used away from the battlefield for reconnaissance and targeting, to larger ones carrying out the types of attacks seen recently in various parts of Russia, including in and around Moscow.
Samuel Bendett, an adviser at CNA, a Virginia-based security analytics firm, said earlier this month that most air defenses around the world were developed to identify aircraft, helicopters and other large targets.
“Most of the air defenses were not developed to try to interdict small U.A.V.s,” he said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.
He said Ukraine had Bober and UJ-22 Airborne drones, which have significant ranges and could also be used to strike Russian targets that would have significant military and economic consequences. While Russia has a number of systems that its officials have praised as successful in downing drones, he added, as long as drones are flying low enough and avoiding certain areas, they likely can get around the air defenses.
“The attacks are certainly applying psychological pressure, especially the air attacks on Moscow,” Mr. Bendett said. But, he added, the question was how much of an effect the drones were having “if the Russian society is resigned to this war.”
Russian police officers standing in front of a building that was reportedly damaged by a Ukrainian drone in Moscow last month.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock
Ukraine has increased its frequency of drone attacks on Russia in recent weeks, a tactic U.S. officials say is intended to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back, especially as the counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops moves slowly.
This month, Ukrainian drones near Moscow forced the Kremlin to temporarily shut down airports serving the capital. Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Ukraine had launched 42 drones at the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and fired a missile that was intercepted not far from Moscow. And on Wednesday, Russian officials said that Ukrainian drone attacks had targeted six regions in the west and southwest of the country, in what appeared to be one of the largest-scale drone assaults on Russia in months.
Although the attacks destroyed the bomber, they have done little significant damage to Russia’s overall military might, U.S. officials have said. No Russians have been killed in the strikes on Moscow, most of which occurred early in the day, reducing damage and disruption. The timing may be for operational security or to avoid Russia’s air defenses, but it has also helped ensure that the attacks did not prompt escalatory attacks by Russia.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service, known as the G.U.R., did not directly claim responsibility for the attacks, but he said strikes on Moscow would continue.
“Russian elites and ordinary Russians now understand that war is not somewhere far away on the territory of Ukraine, which they hate,” Mr. Yusov said in an interview last month, as the drone campaign began to intensify. “War is also in Moscow, it’s already on their territory.”
But U.S. officials say there is a more important audience. If there is a strategic target, it is to bolster the morale of Ukraine’s population and troops, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
Christiaan Triebert, Andrew E. Kramer and Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire artillery on Russian targets in the Bakhmut region on Monday. The Pentagon announced its 45th package of wartime military aid to Ukraine on Tuesday.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The Pentagon will provide up to $250 million in military aid to Ukraine as part of a new package of weapons and equipment announced on Tuesday that will include AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles for air defense.
The package is the 45th such tranche to be drawn from the Defense Department’s existing stockpile of weapons and equipment since August 2021. The inventory of matériel to be provided to Kyiv in this round, according to a Defense Department statement emailed to reporters, also includes ammunition and other equipment, the likes of which the United States has sent in large quantities: guided rockets for HIMARS launchers, 155-millimeter artillery shells, Javelin anti-tank missiles, air-to-ground rockets, Humvee trucks and three million rounds of small arms ammunition.
“The U.S. will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security assistance requirements,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters at a news briefing on Tuesday afternoon.
In order to assist Ukrainian soldiers in breaching Russian minefields as part of their counteroffensive, the Defense Department will also send mine-clearing equipment and demolition munitions that could be used to blast through Russian lines.
The most notable element of the package is the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, which are heat-seeking air-to-air weapons that can be fired from NASAMS, or National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, launchers on the ground. Built as a joint product of Norway and the American defense firm Raytheon, NASAMS uses the kinds of missiles built for NATO warplanes and repurposes them for ground-based air defense systems. The U.S. military uses them for the aerial defense of Washington.
A Navy report called the Sidewinder “one of the oldest, least expensive, and most successful missiles in the U.S. weapons inventory” and noted that more than 40 nations had adopted the weapon for their militaries. It is smaller and lighter in weight than the AIM-7 Sparrow missiles that the Pentagon have previously sent to Kyiv for use in NASAMS launchers.
According to a U.S. Air Force fact sheet, the specific model of Sidewinder that will be sent to Ukraine first arrived in the Pentagon’s arsenal in 1983.
This newest drawdown of matériel does not contain any 155-mm artillery cluster weapons, Ms. Singh said. The White House’s decision in July to provide those shells, each of which contain 72 small anti-tank and anti-personnel grenades, was condemned by many human rights organizations. Shells of this type have been banned by more than 100 countries because of the risk they pose to civilians during and after their use, since the grenades’ failure rate of 14 percent or more produces many duds that can produce de facto minefields. Neither the United States nor Russia nor Ukraine has signed the treaty prohibiting their stockpiling or use.
The United States has provided at least $23.8 billion in military hardware from Pentagon stockpiles during the Biden administration, and has also sent approximately $19.7 billion in financing for Ukraine to purchase goods directly from the American defense industry. The United States has also committed more than $2.6 billion to Ukraine in humanitarian aid, according to a statement released on Tuesday by the State Department’s ShareAmerica platform.
In May, with the Biden administration under intensifying pressure to explain how it intended to continue supporting Ukraine militarily without asking Congress for more appropriations, the Pentagon recalculated the value of the matériel it had sent to Ukraine, freeing up at least $3 billion in additional funds for Kyiv. The two aid packages the Pentagon has announced since, including Tuesday’s, have been smaller than most of the previous tranches.
“We’re confident that we will have enough money to meet Ukraine’s need through the fiscal year,” Ms. Singh said, noting that the department had requested supplemental funding from Congress.
