Ukraine-Russia conflict newest: Russian spies tracked down and killed after Kyiv assassination

Nato chief Mark Rutte will meet with US President Donald Trump when he visits Washington early next week.

Mr Rutte will be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and will aslo meet with US secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth, Nato said in a press release.

The press release did not give an immediate reason for Rutte’s visit but Trump said in a recent interview with NBC News that the US. would be willing to supply weapons to Ukraine via Nato and that he would make a “major statement” on Monday.

The Trump administration has so far only sent weapons authorised by former President Joe Biden, who was a staunch supporter of Kyiv.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s security agency said it tracked down and killed Russian agents it suspected of assassinating one of its senior officers in Kyiv.

Ivan Voronych, an SBU colonel, was killed on Thursday in a bold daylight attack that was caught on surveillance cameras.

Media reports claimed that Colonel Voronych was involved in covert operations in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine and reportedly helped organise Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last year.

On Sunday the SBU said in a statement that the suspected Russian agents were killed in the Kyiv region after they offered resistance to arrest.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has reassured Russia of “unconditional support” from Pyongyang to Moscow in its every effort to resolve the war in Ukraine, its state media reported on Sunday.

Mr Kim’s continued diplomatic help from North Korea came as he met with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who was on a three-day visit to North Korea and described the two countries’ relations as “an invincible fighting brotherhood”.

The two leaders met in North Korea’s eastern coastal city of Wonsan on Saturday, where both countries held their high-level strategic dialogue, for the second time this year, pledging mutual cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang under a partnership treaty signed last year.

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After a series of massive attacks across Ukraine involving hundreds of exploding drones, Russia launched 60 drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. It said 20 of them were shot down and 20 others were jammed.

Earlier, Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched more than 1,800 drones, 1,200 guided bombs and 83 missiles at Ukraine over the past week.

“The Russians are intensifying terror against cities and communities to increasingly intimidate our people,” he said in a post on X.

Russia and North Korea have reaffirmed the strong ties between the countries, in high-level meetings between Kim Jong Un and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russian media reported Lavrov described the two countries’ ties as “an invincible fighting brotherhood” in his meeting with Kim and thanked him for the troops deployed to Russia.

Kim told Lavrov his country would “unconditionally support” Moscow’s efforts to resolve the conflict.

Relations between Russia and North Korea have deepened dramatically during the last two years of the war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, with Pyongyang deploying more than 10,000 troops and arms to Russia to back Moscow’s military campaign.

On Sunday, the intelligence arm of South Korea’s Defence Ministry reported to parliament that North Korea continued to supply artillery ammunition to Russia and has so far shipped about 12 million rounds, Yonhap news said.

Two Russian agents, a man and a woman, were tracked down by Ukrainian intelligence on Sunday after they assassinated an intelligence officer during the week.

SBU colonel Ivan Voronych was killed in Kyiv on Thursday. The SBU said two people – a man and a woman – were suspected of having killed Voronych. It did not say how many suspected FSB agents had been killed on Sunday.

According to the SBU, the alleged assassins were told by their handler to surveil their target and track his movements. They were eventually given the coordinates of a hiding place where they found a pistol with a suppressor, the SBU said.

It said they had tried to “lay low” after Thursday’s killing, but were tracked down by the SBU and police.

“This morning a special operation was conducted, during which the members of the Russian FSB’s agent cell started to resist, and therefore they were liquidated,” the statement on the Telegram messaging app said.

Russian authorities made no immediate public comment on Sunday’s operation, which mirrored past assassinations of senior Russian military officials by Ukraine during the three-year-old war – a source of embarrassment for Moscow’s vast intelligence agencies.

Russian secret service agents were killed on Sunday in the Kyiv region during an operation by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency to arrest them on suspicion of having shot dead an SBU colonel last week, Ukraine said.

In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, the SBU said it believed agents of the Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had been behind the killing of SBU colonel Ivan Voronych in Kyiv on Thursday and that it had tried to detain them on Sunday.

The SBU said two people were suspected of having killed Voronych, a man and a woman. It did not say how many suspected FSB agents had been killed in Sunday’s incident.

Over the last week Russia launched more than 1,800 drones, 1,200 guided bombs and 83 missiles at Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky says.

“The Russians are intensifying terror against cities and communities to increasingly intimidate our people,” he said.

“But despite Moscow’s plans, the air defence forces are achieving good results. Interceptor drones are performing particularly well, with hundreds of Russian-Iranian ‘Shaheds’ shot down over the past week. And every meeting with partners this week was about scaling up this technology,” he added, referring to commitments made during the Ukraine recovery conference held in Rome during the week.

Zelensky continued: “I am grateful to everyone willing to invest in the protection of life, and to our warriors who safeguard the Ukrainian skies. ‘Shaheds’ are one of Russia’s ways of prolonging the war.

“We must neutralise this threat in order to bring diplomacy into motion sooner. We hope for the implementation of all agreements that will strengthen our defence. We count on strong decisions from the United States, Europe, the G7, and all our partners.”