عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Putin Warns of Long War as West Seeks to Unblock Ukraine's Grain Exports

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan June 29, 2022. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool via REUTERS
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan June 29, 2022. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool via REUTERS
TT
TT

Putin Warns of Long War as West Seeks to Unblock Ukraine's Grain Exports

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan June 29, 2022. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool via REUTERS
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan June 29, 2022. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool via REUTERS

Western officials on Friday tried to coax Russia into allowing Ukraine to ship its grain out to the world as the four-month-old war threatened to bring hunger to countries far away from the battlefields.

Moscow, however, accused the West of waging economic warfare on Russia by attempting to isolate it with sanctions imposed over the Feb. 24 invasion.

President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia's military operations in Ukraine had barely got started and the prospects for negotiation would grow dimmer the longer the conflict dragged on.

"We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this," Putin said in a speech to parliament on Thursday.

On the frontlines in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, officials reported continued Russian shelling of towns and villages ahead of an anticipated new push to grasp more territory.

At a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia, some of the staunchest critics of the Russian invasion confronted the Kremlin's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov.

High on their concerns was getting grain shipments from Ukraine out of blockaded Black Sea ports. Ukraine is a top exporter and aid agencies have warned that countries in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere face devastating food shortages if supplies do not reach them.

At a plenary session, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Moscow to let Ukrainian grain out to the world, a Western official said.

"He addressed Russia directly, saying: 'To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Its grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out,'" the official said.

Earlier, Lavrov had berated the West, saying that instead of focusing on how to tackle global economic problems at the meeting, ministers had embarked on "frenzied criticism" of Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi called on the G20 to "find a way forward" to address global challenges and said the repercussions of the war, including rising energy and food prices, would hit poor countries the hardest.

"It is our responsibility to end the war sooner than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not at the battlefield," Retno said at the opening of talks.

However, Putin's comments in Moscow indicated that the prospects of that happening were dim right now.

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two has killed thousands, displaced millions and flattened Ukrainian cities.

Russia says its "special military operation" is intended to degrade Ukraine's military and root out people it calls dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western backers say Russia is engaged in an unjustified land grab.

After failing to quickly take the capital Kyiv, Russia is now waging a war of attrition in Ukraine's industrial heartland of the Donbas, made up of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

On Sunday, Moscow declared it had "liberated" Luhansk and now plans to capture parts of neighboring Donetsk it does not control.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Friday Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling villages, towns and cities.

"They hit houses, every building that seems to them a possible fortification. To move forward, do not count personal losses and do not feel sorry for the inhabitants of the area," he said.

The situation was similar in settlements in Donetsk.

Vadym Lyakh, the mayor of Sloviansk in Donetsk, said a woman was killed overnight when Russian shelling hit a residential building.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

Britain's defense ministry said Russian forces were likely to be pausing to replenish before undertaking new offensive operations in Donetsk. The ministry said Russia's immediate tactical objective might be Siversk, a small industrial city in the north of Donetsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video message, said the raising of the Ukrainian flag on Snake Island in the Black Sea on Thursday was a sign his country would not be broken.

Russia abandoned Snake Island, about 140 km (85 miles) south of the port of Odesa, at the end of June - a victory for Ukraine that Kyiv hoped could loosen Moscow's blockade of Ukrainian ports.

"Let every Russian captain, aboard a ship or a plane, see the Ukrainian flag on Snake Island and let him know that our country will not be broken," Zelenskiy said.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

Satellite Images Suggest North Korea Expanding Missile Plant, Researchers Say

A satellite image shows a suspected missile assembly building under construction (lower center of photo) at the "February 11 Plant" near Hamhung, North Korea in this handout image obtained by Reuters on November 20, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)
A satellite image shows a suspected missile assembly building under construction (lower center of photo) at the "February 11 Plant" near Hamhung, North Korea in this handout image obtained by Reuters on November 20, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)
TT
TT

Satellite Images Suggest North Korea Expanding Missile Plant, Researchers Say

A satellite image shows a suspected missile assembly building under construction (lower center of photo) at the "February 11 Plant" near Hamhung, North Korea in this handout image obtained by Reuters on November 20, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)
A satellite image shows a suspected missile assembly building under construction (lower center of photo) at the "February 11 Plant" near Hamhung, North Korea in this handout image obtained by Reuters on November 20, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)

North Korea is expanding a key weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine, researchers at a US-based think tank have concluded, based on satellite images.

The facility, known as the February 11 plant, is part of the Ryongsong Machine Complex in Hamhung, North Korea's second-largest city, on the country's east coast.

Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), located at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said the plant was the only one known to produce the Hwasong-11 class of solid-fuel ballistic missiles. Ukrainian officials say these munitions - known as the KN-23 in the West - have been used by Russian forces in their assault on Ukraine.

The expansion of the complex has not been previously reported.

Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied that North Korea has transferred weapons for Russia to use against Ukraine, which it invaded in February 2022. Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty at a summit in June and have pledged to boost their military ties.

North Korea's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The satellite images, taken in early October by the commercial satellite firm Planet Labs, show what appears to be an additional assembly building under construction as well as a new housing facility, likely intended for workers, according to the analysis by researchers at CNS.

It also appears that Pyongyang is improving the entrances for some of the underground facilities at the complex.

A disused bridge crane that was in front of a tunnel entrance, blocking easy access, was removed, suggesting they might be placing an emphasis on that part of the facility, Lair said.

"We see this as a suggestion that they're massively increasing, or they're trying to significantly increase, the throughput of this factory," Lair said.

The new assembly building is about 60 to 70 percent the size of the previous building used to assemble missiles.

In 2023, state media published images, which Reuters has reviewed, showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walking through new buildings at the complex in Hamhung, where workers were assembling tail kits and nose cones for what appeared to be the KN-23, according to analysts.

In the past, publicly released videos from North Korean state media show that the complex has produced everything from tank wheels to the casings for rocket motors, Lair said.

LOW-FLYING MISSILES

The KN-23 was first tested in May 2019, and is designed to evade missile defenses by flying on a lower, "depressed" trajectory, experts have told Reuters, making them potentially useful for Russia as it seeks ways to penetrate Ukraine's air defenses.

Russia has fired thousands of missiles since the invasion. Leaning on North Korea for additional supplies could ease the strain on its own production facilities, Lair said.

North Korea's state news agency KCNA has reported that construction is underway at the Ryongsong Machine Complex.

This month, KCNA said the facility "is pushing ahead with the projects for attaining the goal for modernization planned for this year." The work includes rebuilding production facilities as well as assembling and installing equipment at machine workshops and a steel casting workshop, it said.

Researchers at SI Analytics, a South Korean satellite imagery firm that uses AI technology to scour images, also confirmed the new construction at the February 11 plant, saying in a report on Monday that some of the construction near the loading area would likely be used to conceal the future operations of the factory from satellites.

"Considering the presence of numerous construction materials, vehicles, and open-top freight cars loaded with materials around the site, the construction appears to be progressing rapidly," the firm said. The report said the facility was used to produce ballistic missiles, without naming the KN-23.

Michael Duitsman, also a research associate at CNS, said it was possible that the new construction revealed in the satellite images could be a storage facility, but he believed it was more likely a new assembly building.

North Korean missiles account for a fraction of Russia's strikes during its war on Ukraine, but their alleged use has caused alarm in Seoul and Washington because it suggests an end of nearly two-decade consensus among UN Security Council permanent members on preventing Pyongyang from expanding its ballistic missile programs.

SI Analytics said on Monday it had also identified new construction at the nearby February 8 Vinalon Complex, which is believed to produce fuel for ballistic missiles. The construction may be aimed at boosting production of solid propellants or UDMH, an important liquid rocket engine fuel, the report said.

Joseph Dempsey, a military analyst with London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that North Korea's expansion of short-range ballistic missile facilities would likely be motivated mainly by a desire to boost the country's own arsenal.

He said it was unclear to what extent Pyongyang may have expanded production capacity to meet the demands of its new cooperation with Moscow.

More than 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to the Russian region of Kursk, where Ukraine launched a major cross-border incursion in August, according to Washington, Kyiv and Seoul.

The troops will fight as part of Russia's airborne unit and marines, with some already participating in battles in the Ukraine war, a South Korean lawmaker who sits on the parliamentary intelligence committee said on Wednesday.

Russia has not denied the involvement of North Korean troops in the war, which it has been waging in Ukraine since launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022.