Ukraine-Russia warfare newest: Moscow detains suspect in killing of Putin’s common as North Korea faces heavy losses

Russia has detained an Uzbek citizen who investigators believe placed the bomb inside an electric scooter which killed General Igor Kirillov on the instructions of Ukraine’s security service, the Investigative Committee said.

The top Russian general accused by Ukraine of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops was assassinated in Moscow by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service yesterday in the most high-profile killing of its kind.

A senior Russian general was killed by a bomb hidden under an e-scooter outside his apartment in Moscow. Igor Kirillov was the head of the Russian military’s nuclear, biological, and chemical protection forces. His assistant was also killed in the attack.

A Ukrainian security service official has said Kyiv was responsible for the attack.

The attack came a day after Ukraine’s security service levelled criminal charges against Lt Gen Igor Kirillov for using chemical weapons during Russia’s invasion.

Ukraine’s security services say it has recorded nearly 5,000 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Sir Keir Starmer has for the first time lifted the lid on his Brexit reset plans for a new defence pact with the EU.

It came as the prime minister issued a rallying call to the European Union for closer defence cooperation in an exclusive interview with The Independent.

As Sir Keir prepares for a Donald Trump presidency with the potential withdrawal of US support from Ukraine and Europe, he shared his vision for coordination across funding, training and the use of British troops.

Sitting down with The Independent in Estonia, the prime minister said the UK must work “as effectively as we can with our partners” to bolster Ukraine’s position amid an increasingly volatile global landscape and heightened tensions with Russia.

Russian forces are around 3km (1.9 miles) to the south of the strategically important eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, open source maps published by Russian and Ukrainian war bloggers show.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top commander, has said his troops in and around Pokrovsk have prepared for the approaching Russians by repeatedly strengthening their defensive positions and he has spoken of sending new reserves, ammunition and equipment to bolster the defenders.

But why does Russia want to capture Pokrovsk?

Moscow says it has annexed Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and sees taking control of Pokrovsk as an important stepping stone to incorporating the entire region into Russia. Kyiv and the West reject Russia’s territorial claims as illegal and accuse Moscow of prosecuting a war of colonial conquest.

Control of the city, which the Russian media call “the gateway to Donetsk”, would allow Moscow to severely disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and boost its campaign to capture Chasiv Yar, which sits on higher ground offering potential control of a wider area.

Squeezing the Ukrainian military’s access to the road network in the vicinity would make it harder for Kyiv’s troops to hold pockets of territory either side of Pokrovsk, which could allow Russia to consolidate and advance the frontline.

Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region and increased pressure in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s top army commander said in an evening update yesterday.

“For the third day the enemy is conducting intensive assaults in the Kursk region,” Oleksandr Syrskyi told government and regional officials in an online speech. He added that Russia was “actively” using North Korean troops who were taking significant losses.

Mr Syrskyi said fighting was also escalating in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian forces were advancing at their fastest pace this year.

He told government and regional officials that Russian troops continued to focus their assaults on the logistical centres of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.

A US military official said North Korean troops had suffered several hundred casualties in Kursk region, and their ranks had ranged from lower-level troops to “very near the top”.

As the war approaches its third year, Ukrainian troops are weary and outnumbered along the 1,170km (727 mile) frontline.

Not so very long ago, Vladimir Putin, the would-be reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, had some cause for satisfaction. True, his ill-fated “special military operation” in Ukraine had spectacularly failed in its initial stated aim of subsuming the country into a Greater Russia, resistance supposedly crumbling in days, with Volodymyr Zelensky skulking off into exile.

The Ukrainians are continuing their resistance and, for now, have been able to disrupt Russian bombing raids with longer-range Western missiles. They’ve also carried out the audacious assassination, close to the Kremlin, of the Russian general in charge of chemical weapons. Footage released by Kyiv purports to show bewildered North Korean soldiers cowering in surrender (and has not been challenged).

A couple of elderly Russian oil tankers have broken up in the Black Sea; and the fall of Bashar al-Assad has fractured Russian power in the Middle East, weakening Iran with it and jeopardising important military and naval bases in Syria. No longer can Iran freely traverse Syria to arm terrorists, and the ayatollahs look increasingly weak and isolated in the face of Israeli attacks and their own feeble attempts to penetrate Benjamin Netanyahu’s defensive Iron Dome. Russia is on the back foot.

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Ukraine’s SBU security service said it has uncovered 12 agents spying for Russia on locations hosting F-16 fighter jets and air defence systems across Ukraine.

It said it detained “the biggest network of agents” in Ukraine’s north and south.

The possible deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops in Ukraine could be raised at a meeting of European leaders in Brussels today, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The meeting to discuss support for Ukraine, almost three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, will gather the leaders of Germany, France, Poland and Nato, among others, according to sources.

The Ukrainian leader publicly floated the idea of foreign troops being deployed until Ukraine could join Nato during a meeting with a German politician earlier this month.

The possibility was first raised by French president Emmanuel Macron in February but no consensus was reached among European leaders on the matter.

Answering questions from reporters about it potentially being discussed in Brussels, Zelenskiy said that “everyone who will be there has the right to raise this or that issue”. “There could be questions not only about the (foreign) contingent, but also questions that Ukraine will raise,” he told a joint press conference with Polish prime minister Donald Tusk in Lviv.