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Russia's FM to Visit China for Ukraine War Talks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Reuters
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Reuters
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Russia's FM to Visit China for Ukraine War Talks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Reuters
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Reuters

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit China on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine and the deepening partnership between Moscow and Beijing.
Talks between Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who extended the invitation to the Russian minister, will include bilateral cooperation as well as "hot topics", such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Reuters reported last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China in May for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in what could be the Kremlin chief's first overseas trip of his new presidential term.
China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.
The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat, while US President Joe Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential contest between democracies and autocracies.
Putin and Xi share a broad world view, which sees the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges US supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
China-Russian trade hit a record of $240.1 billion in 2023, up 26.3% from a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data. Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9% in 2023 while imports from Russia rose 13%.
China-United States trade fell 11.6% to $664.5 billion in 2023, according to the Chinese customs data.

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Ukraine Says It Captured 2 North Korean Soldiers Fighting for Russia

This undated handout photograph released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on January 11, 2025 shows an alleged North Korean soldier lying in a cell at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Handout / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / AFP)
This undated handout photograph released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on January 11, 2025 shows an alleged North Korean soldier lying in a cell at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Handout / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / AFP)
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Ukraine Says It Captured 2 North Korean Soldiers Fighting for Russia

This undated handout photograph released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on January 11, 2025 shows an alleged North Korean soldier lying in a cell at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Handout / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / AFP)
This undated handout photograph released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on January 11, 2025 shows an alleged North Korean soldier lying in a cell at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Handout / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / AFP)

Ukraine’s forces have captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, the first such claim by Kyiv since North Korea sent thousands of troops to shore up Moscow's war effort on the other side of the world.

Zelenskyy made the comments days after Ukraine, facing a slow Russian onslaught in the east, began pressing new attacks in Kursk to retain ground captured in a lightning incursion in August — the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II.

Moscow’s counterattack has left Ukrainian forces outstretched and demoralized, killing and wounding thousands and retaking more than 40% of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Kursk Ukraine had seized.

“Our soldiers have captured North Korean soldiers in Kursk. These are two soldiers who, although wounded, survived, were taken to Kyiv, and are communicating” with Ukrainian security services, Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

He shared photos of two men resting on cots in a room with bars over the windows. Both wore bandages, one around his jaw and the other around both hands and wrists.

Zelenskyy said capturing the soldiers alive was “not easy.” He asserted that Russian and North Korean forces fighting in Kursk have tried to conceal the presence of North Korean soldiers, including by killing wounded comrades on the battlefield to avoid their capture and interrogation by Kyiv.

Ukraine's security service SBU on Saturday said one of the soldiers had no documents at all, while the other had been carrying a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.

According to the SBU, one of the soldiers claimed he had been told he was going to Russia for training, rather than to fight against Ukraine. He said his combat unit, made up of North Koreans, only received one week of training alongside Russian troops before being sent to the front.

A senior Ukrainian military official said last month that a couple hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk have been killed or wounded in battle.

Ukraine estimates that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia. The White House and Pentagon said the North Korean forces have been battling on the front lines in largely infantry positions. They have been fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.

Its full-scale invasion three years ago left Russia holding a fifth of Ukraine, and Zelenskyy has hinted that he hopes controlling Kursk will help force Moscow to negotiate an end to the war. But multiple Ukrainian and Western officials in Kyiv last month told The Associated Press that they fear gambling on Kursk will weaken the whole 1000-kilometer (621-mile) front line, and Ukraine is losing precious ground in the east.