South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol Makes Surprise Visit to Ukraine

South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
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South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol Makes Surprise Visit to Ukraine

South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 12, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, offering an apparent show of support for the country in its war with Russia.
Yoon’s office said he traveled to Ukraine with his wife, Kim Keon Hee, following trips to Lithuania for a NATO summit and to Poland. It’s his first visit since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 17 months ago, The Associated Press said.
Yoon toured Bucha and Irpin, a pair of small cities near Kyiv where bodies of civilians were found in the streets and mass graves after Russian troops retreated from the capital region last year. He laid flowers at a monument to the country's war dead.
The South Korean leader was scheduled to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later in the day, Yoon’s senior adviser for press affairs, Kim Eun-hye, said in a statement.
South Korea, a key US ally in Asia, joined international sanctions against Russia and has provided Ukraine with humanitarian and financial support.
But the Asian nation, a growing arms exporter, has not provided weapons to Ukraine in line with its long-standing policy of not supplying arms to countries actively engaged in conflict.
Earlier this month, Yoon said in written responses to questions from The Associated Press that supplies of de-mining equipment, ambulances and other non-military materials “are in the works” following a request from Ukraine.
He said South Korea already provided support to replace the Kakhovka Dam, which was destroyed last month. The Russian and Ukrainian governments have accused each other of blowing up the dam, but the evidence suggests Russia had more of a motive to cause deadly flooding, endanger crops and threaten drinking water supplies in a contested part of Ukraine.
“The government of the Republic of Korea is firmly committed to actively joining the United States and other liberal democracies in international efforts to defend the freedom of Ukraine,” Yoon said in written responses to the AP.
During a January visit to South Korea, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called for the country to provide direct military support to Ukraine, saying Kyiv was in urgent need of weapons to fight off the prolonged Russian invasion.
In May, when Yoon met Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska in Seoul, the president said he would expand South Korea's non-lethal aid to Ukraine. Yoon’s spokesperson, Lee Do Woon, said at the time that Zelenska made no request for South Korean weapons supplies during her conversation with Yoon.
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, South Korea has reached billions of dollars worth of deals to provide tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and other weapons systems to NATO member Poland.
An American official said in November that the United States had agreed to buy 100,000 artillery rounds from South Korean manufacturers to provide to Ukraine, although South Korean officials have maintained that the munitions were meant to refill depleted US stocks.
Yoon and Zelenskyy met in May on the sidelines of a Group of Seven industrialized nations summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Zelensky thanked South Korea for its humanitarian shipments of medicines, computers and generators and requested additional provisions of non-lethal items, Yoon’s office said at the time.
The two leaders also agreed to work to assist South Korean companies taking part in post-war reconstruction projects in Ukraine, according to Yoon’s office.
Yoon and his wife's visit came two days after Russia launched another barrage of Iranian-made drones at the Kyiv region. Ukrainian officials said their air defenses intercepted the drones but that wreckage fell on four districts of the capital, wounding two people and destroying several homes.
Although Kyiv did not come under attack in the hours before the South Korean president's arrival, Ukrainian forces on Friday and overnight downed 10 Russian drones across the country, the Ukrainian air force reported Saturday.
In a Telegram post, the air force added that Moscow fired six Iranian-made Shahed drones at Ukraine’s south and east during the night, four of which were shot down. It did not immediately give details of any casualties or damage.
In southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia province, where Ukraine has been engaged in a counteroffensive to take back occupied territory, there were 45 air and artillery attacks between Friday and Saturday, Gov. Yurii Malashka reported.
Russian forces shelled neighboring Kherson province 70 times over the same period, using mortars, artillery, drones, tanks, aviation and multiple rocket launchers, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Saturday. No civilians were wounded, he said.
Russian shelling over the past day killed one civilian in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk province, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported Saturday. Ukrainian forces have been pressing their counteroffensive in the area, inching their way from Velyka Novosilka down toward the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.



Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.