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Moscow Says Will Respond if NATO Moves Nuclear Forces Closer to Russia

People take cover as an air raid siren sounds in Kyiv, Ukraine. Reuters
People take cover as an air raid siren sounds in Kyiv, Ukraine. Reuters
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Moscow Says Will Respond if NATO Moves Nuclear Forces Closer to Russia

People take cover as an air raid siren sounds in Kyiv, Ukraine. Reuters
People take cover as an air raid siren sounds in Kyiv, Ukraine. Reuters

Moscow will take adequate precautionary measures if NATO deploys nuclear forces and infrastructure closer to Russia's border, Russian news agencies quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as saying on Saturday.

"It will be necessary to respond ... by taking adequate precautionary measures that would ensure the viability of deterrence," Interfax agency quoted Grushko as saying.

Moscow has no hostile intentions towards Finland and Sweden and does not see "real" reasons for those two countries to be joining the NATO alliance, Grushko added.

He also reiterated the Kremlin's earlier statement that Moscow's response to NATO's possible expansion will depend on how close the alliance moves military assets towards Russia and what infrastructure it deploys.

Finland's plan to apply for NATO membership, announced on Thursday, and the expectation that Sweden will follow, would bring about the expansion of the Western military alliance that Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to prevent.

Meanwhile, the bodies of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were brought to a rail yard outside Kyiv and stacked with hundreds of others in a refrigerated train, waiting for the time when they can sent back to their families.

“Most of them were brought from the Kyiv region, there are some from Chernihiv region and from some other regions too,” Volodymyr Lyamzin, the chief civil-military liaison officer, told Reuters on Friday as stretcher-bearers in white, head-to-toe protective suits lifted bodybags into the box cars.

He said refrigerated trains stationed in other regions across Ukraine were being used for the same grim purpose.

While there have been no reliable estimates of the scale of Russia's losses, the scene filmed by Reuters provided a bitter taste of the price President Vladimir Putin is paying since ordering the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

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World

Iran Airlines Cancel Flights as US Sanctions Hit

Pedestrians walk past an office of Iranian airline Mahan Air in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Pedestrians walk past an office of Iranian airline Mahan Air in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
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Iran Airlines Cancel Flights as US Sanctions Hit

Pedestrians walk past an office of Iranian airline Mahan Air in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Pedestrians walk past an office of Iranian airline Mahan Air in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iranian airlines were forced to cancel some international flights on Wednesday after the US tightened sanctions on Iran's aviation industry in a new effort to cripple its economy.

A travel agent in Tehran told AFP that flights to Baghdad, Muscat, Qatar, Georgia and Azerbaijan had all been suspended, but routes to multiple other destinations remained available, including China.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the new measures on Monday as part of an earlier threat to impose "economic D-Day" on Iran, an attempt to force it into submission following their nearly seven-month war.

But Iran's aviation sector has already been a target of sanctions for years, and it remains unclear what the full impact will be and whether other countries will comply.

Even after the new sanctions took effect on Wednesday, a flight from Tehran operated by Mahan Air, one of Iran's biggest carriers, landed in Guangzhou in China, according to tracking data from FlightRadar24.

China on Tuesday said it opposes the US sanctions and called them illegal. A flight to Shanghai was also due to depart on Wednesday, according to Tehran's international airport.

Some flights to Istanbul were also scheduled, though others had been cancelled, the travel agent in Tehran told AFP.

"The situation is unstable and we are no longer selling tickets for the time being for fear of cancellations," the the agent said, requesting anonymity.

A Mahan flight from Kabul was also expected to arrive in Tehran around midday. According to the website for Tehran's international airport, other connections to Türkiye and Armenia also remained possible using smaller Iranian airlines, including Varesh.

Flights to Najaf in Iraq and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates were also scheduled.

Bessent on Monday vowed to "shut down" Iranian carriers and punish anyone doing business with them.

"If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets or you will be knocked out of the dollar system," he warned other countries.

The restrictions will further complicate the ability of Iranians to travel abroad or return to their country.

Iranian media also reported cancellations, with the Tasnim news agency on Tuesday citing a civil aviation spokesman as saying that Baghdad and Muscat airports "will no longer accept" Iranian flights.

"Other international flights, including Istanbul, will operate as scheduled and as usual, and at present there are no problems with these flights," Tasnim said.

According to Tasnim, Iran's aviation authorities are in talks to reroute Baghdad flights to Najaf, a major destination for Iranian pilgrims.

In Iraq, while the government has not publicly announced plans to enforce the ban, several sources including a senior government official told AFP that Baghdad would comply with the US measures.

World

Analysts North Korea Appears to Have Tested Upgraded Hypersonic Weapon

This picture taken on September 21, 2026 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 22, 2026, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaking at the 3rd Workshop for Officials in the Propaganda Sector of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)
This picture taken on September 21, 2026 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 22, 2026, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaking at the 3rd Workshop for Officials in the Propaganda Sector of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)
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Analysts North Korea Appears to Have Tested Upgraded Hypersonic Weapon

This picture taken on September 21, 2026 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 22, 2026, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaking at the 3rd Workshop for Officials in the Propaganda Sector of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)
This picture taken on September 21, 2026 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 22, 2026, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaking at the 3rd Workshop for Officials in the Propaganda Sector of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)

North Korea appears to have tested a hypersonic weapon that could evade missile defenses and prove hard to track and intercept, analysts told AFP Wednesday.

South Korea and Japan said Pyongyang fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast Sunday, condemning the launches as threats to regional peace and security.

North Korea did not identify the weapon, saying only that its missile bureau had "successfully tested a new type of weapon" in a demonstration of "ultra-modern defense technology.”

Analysts said the weapon appeared to be an upgraded version of North Korea's Hwasongpho-11Ma-1 hypersonic short-range ballistic missile.

With a range of 450 to 600 kilometers (around 280-370 miles), the hypersonic missile is "designed to strike key military facilities across the Korean peninsula within an extremely short period of time,” Yang Moo-jin, former president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

Images released by Pyongyang's state media showed leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Ju Ae watching a screen displaying what appeared to be the missile's flight path, labelled "Hwasongpho-11Ma-1 flight trajectory.”

The North Korean leader warned this week that the weapon's advances would give adversaries "an incurable headache and a very cruel and unavoidable blow,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Despite long-running UN sanctions, North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear-armed state in law, with its leaders repeatedly declaring its atomic arsenal permanent and irreversible.

North Korea has also secured critical backing from Russia alongside its traditional ally China, leaving fewer incentives for it to engage in renewed diplomacy with Washington.

"North Korea may be talking up its own capabilities, but it has clearly reached the point where it can launch weapons of this caliber," Ahn Chan-il, a researcher originally from North Korea, told AFP.

"I believe these tests are less about upgrading its own military capabilities than testing weapons produced by its defense industry to meet Russia's wartime demand."

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea has become a key ally of the Kremlin, sending troops to support Moscow's war effort in return for economic benefits and military technology, analysts say.

Hong Sung-pyo, senior researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said that if used against South Korea, the hypersonic weapon would pose a serious threat.

"But a single successful test is not enough to prove its capabilities. If deployed operationally, however, it would be extremely difficult to defend against," he told AFP.

"Because it maneuvers as it descends during the terminal phase of flight, it is harder to track and intercept than a conventional ballistic missile -- particularly at hypersonic speeds."

World

Tigray Rebel Forces Seize Ethiopia Regional Airport

(FILES) The charred remaining of a T-72 tank lay on the road that connects Shiraro to Shire on October 12, 2024. (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP)
(FILES) The charred remaining of a T-72 tank lay on the road that connects Shiraro to Shire on October 12, 2024. (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP)
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Tigray Rebel Forces Seize Ethiopia Regional Airport

(FILES) The charred remaining of a T-72 tank lay on the road that connects Shiraro to Shire on October 12, 2024. (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP)
(FILES) The charred remaining of a T-72 tank lay on the road that connects Shiraro to Shire on October 12, 2024. (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP)

Tigrayan rebel forces in northern Ethiopia have seized control of the airport in the regional capital, security and local sources told AFP on Wednesday, at a time of rising tensions with the federal government.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the region, fought a devastating civil war with the federal government in 2020-2022 that killed some 600,000 people, according to African Union estimates.

Sporadic clashes in recent months have raised fears of a return to war.

"While we were on our way to the airport for work, our supervisor called the driver and told him that the airport had been taken over by Tigray forces. Since there were no flights, he told us to return home," an employee at Alula Aba Nega Airport in the Tigrayan capital Mekelle told AFP.

The information was confirmed by a foreign security source based in Ethiopia.

A small number of federal police guard the airport, and their condition was unknown.

Flight Radar, an air traffic tracker, showed that Wednesday morning's flight between Mekelle and the federal capital, Addis Ababa, had been cancelled.

"Ethiopian Airlines has temporarily suspended flights to Mekele, Axum, and Shire effective today, due to the current situation in the Tigray region," the national carrier said in a statement.

On Sunday, the TPLF was announced as a member of a new alliance of anti-government armed groups from across the country.

Ethiopia faces a myriad of insurgencies, including in its most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara.

The TPLF ruled the whole of Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018 before being sidelined with the rise of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, eventually triggering the civil war.

The Pretoria Peace Agreement ended the war and maintained an uneasy calm until late 2025, when clashes resumed.

The federal government has since launched multiple drone strikes in Tigray and massed troops at the regional border.

Rights groups have accused the TPLF of a campaign of forced recruitment this year as it prepares for renewed conflict.

The region has not recovered from the last war, with around one million people still displaced and many aspects of the peace agreement still unfulfilled.

Ethiopian authorities have accused the TPLF of allying with neighboring Eritrea, as well as Ethiopian armed groups.

The federal government has a significant military advantage, having ramped up production of military drones since the last conflict.