Kyiv condemns Pyongyang's weaponry after deadly attacks on Zaporizhzhia

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has accused Moscow of employing ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea in overnight strikes on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia that claimed at least six lives and injured a further 19 people, in the latest indication of deepening military co-operation between Russia and the isolated Asian state. In a video address delivered on Monday evening, Zelensky asserted that Russia "for the first time" found itself unable to wage war without reinforcements from Pyongyang, warning that the growing use of North Korean missiles and soldiers in Ukraine and Europe posed a danger to the wider world by allowing Moscow to "correct their shortcomings and blind spots". The accusations came as Russia's own territory came under sustained attack, with Ukrainian drones striking warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, in the southern Voronezh region, and a separate deadly assault on Tatarstan, more than 1,100 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, killing at least 13 people including one child.

The attacks on Zaporizhzhia, which regional governor Ivan Fedorov said involved missiles and guided bombs, damaged industrial facilities, infrastructure, and non-residential buildings, with photographs posted online showing vehicles and structures engulfed in flames. In the capital, Kyiv, one person was injured in strikes that triggered air raid sirens twice during the night, with explosions heard on the outskirts and a hospital damaged, though officials confirmed that staff and patients had been sheltering at the time. Ukrainian authorities reported that Russia had launched 120 drones overnight alongside a range of different missiles, though for the first time they did not provide a specific number of missiles fired or intercepted, following an Air Force statement on Monday urging the media to avoid "sensationalised headlines" or the spread of "pessimism" regarding a shortage of air defence interceptors. Strikes on electrical substations in Kherson and Kharkiv caused power outages, while two women, aged 52 and 66, were injured in a drone attack on Sumy, according to Sergiy Kryvosheenko, head of the Sumy City Military Administration, who reported damage to civilian vehicles, warehouse buildings, and infrastructure facilities.

In his address, Zelensky also hailed a Ukrainian air strike on a Russian petrochemical plant in western Siberia on Monday as a "very significant achievement" by the military, promising "more Ukrainian deep strikes, which should demonstrate to Russia and the Russians that peace is necessary". The attacks on Russian soil come a day after one of the deadliest single strikes on Russia since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, when Ukrainian drones hit the city of Tatarstan, with Ukraine's Armed Forces stating they had targeted the city's Tanevo oil refinery, and verified social media images showing large plumes of smoke and flames rising into the sky. The Uzbek consulate in Tatarstan confirmed that seven of those killed were citizens of Uzbekistan.

Separately, reports emerged of a fire and explosions at a Wildberries logistics centre in the Voronezh region, though the company has yet to confirm the attack but stated that its facilities in the region, which borders Ukraine, had been evacuated. Ukrainian drone attacks had previously targeted several Wildberries warehouses in July, disrupting operations for numerous small and medium-sized Russian businesses, with Kyiv stating at the time that it was targeting logistics hubs used by Russians to purchase military equipment and disrupt supplies to the Russian army. The latest accusations regarding North Korean missiles are not the first from Zelensky, who warned over the weekend that as many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers were being sent to fight alongside Russian forces, underscoring the growing international dimension of a conflict that shows no sign of abating.