Ukraine war latest: Kyiv fires US missiles into Russia as North Korea joins war

France’s Emmanuel Macron has said that China has an important role to play in avoiding nuclear escalation, after Russian president Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike.

Meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping in Rio de Janeiro as part of the G20 summit, Mr Macron said he asked him to put pressure on Mr Putin to end the war with Ukraine.

Mr Macron said North Korea’s decision to send troops to fight in Ukraine had raised the stakes for China, and that it should push for a de-escalation after Mr Putin’s decision to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the summit, the French president said he would invite Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk to France in February for an artificial intelligence summit.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 44 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 20 over the northwestern Novgorod region, Russia’s defence ministry said this morning.

The other 24 drones were destroyed over several regions in Russia’s central and western part, the ministry said.

The ministry did not provide any information about potential damage as result of the attacks.

He argued the US ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.

We look closer at the weapons that could mark a turning point in the war:

European delegates at the G20 summit in Brazil were unhappy with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s decision to end talks and issue the group’s final statement a day early to curtail prickly discussion on the war in Ukraine, sources said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday he regretted that the G20 communique did not underscore Russia’s responsibility in starting the Ukraine war, particularly on the 1,000th day of its full-scale invasion, saying: “It is too little when the G20 cannot find the words to make it clear Russia is responsible.”

Wording on Ukraine has been thorny at G20 meetings since the war began, because Russia and its allies are sitting at the table. Russian president Vladimir Putin did not attend the Rio summit but was represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

The communique is usually issued at the end of the summit, but Lula decided to approve the text while wrapping up Monday’s plenary session – at a moment the leaders of France, Germany and the United States were not in the room, diplomats said.

A European official called Lula’s maneuver “brutal” but his country decided to respect the prerogative of the summit host to decide when to issue the joint statement.

Brazil hastened approval of the communique on Monday night to avoid the risk of the summit ending without a final declaration, even though the Europeans were asking for stronger language on Russia’s role in the war, three Brazilian diplomats who were present at the talks told Reuters.

Around 10,900 North Korea troops have been deployed to Kursk as part of Russia’s airborne unit and marines, with some having already participated in battles in the Ukraine war, a South Korean lawmaker said today, citing the country’s spy agency.

North Korea has also shipped additional arms for the war in Ukraine including howitzers and multiple rocket launchers, the lawmaker said, citing the National Intelligence Service.

The spy agency is still trying to determine the exact number of North Korean troop casualties and whether any had surrendered amid conflicting information, the lawmaker said.

Ukraine’s use of US given ATACMS missiles to strike deep inside Russia has marked a new phase of war, a senior Russian official has warned.

Ukraine used US’s ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory yesterday taking advantage of newly granted permission from the outgoing administration of US president Joe Biden on the war’s 1,000th day.

Ukraine said it struck a Russian arms depot about 110km (70 miles) inside Russia, an attack that caused secondary explosions. Ukraine’s military did not publicly specify the weapons used, but a Ukrainian government source and a US official confirmed it had used ATACMS.

“This is, of course, a signal that they want to escalate,” Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in Brazil yesterday at G20 news conference.

“We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly,” he added, accusing Washington of helping Kyiv operate the missiles.

Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel a Russian air attack on Kyiv early today, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said.

Reuters’ witnesses heard multiple blasts in what sounded like air defence units in operation.

Mr Trump’s comprehensive victory in the US election, which came off the back of his promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, has brought into sharp relief the difficult situation on the frontline for Kyiv.

Russian forces have continued to make gains in the eastern region of Donetsk, advancing along several fronts towards the city of Pokrovsk, a linchpin of the wider area’s defence.

Read the full report by Tom Watling:

Russian air defence units destroyed 42 Ukrainian drones in at least eight southern and central regions last evening, including 32 in Bryansk region on the border and two in Moscow region, officials said.

Russia’s defence ministry gave the tally of 42 drones, saying they had been destroyed between 9pm and 11.55pm (1800 to 2055 GMT). It gave no details of damage.

The ministry said 32 of the drones had been destroyed in the border region of Bryansk.

Ukraine has long deployed drones over long distances to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, including airfields and sites associated with energy.

But the use of dozens of drones dispatched over a short period of time was unusual.

Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported air defences in action in a series of posts on the Telegram. He reported no casualties or damage.

The defence ministry said two drones had been destroyed in Moscow region around the Russian capital, with another downed in Smolensk region, near the border with Belarus.

The ministry also reported one drone downed each in central Oryol region and in the border regions of Rostov and Kursk.

A special emergency hotline between the Kremlin and the White House is not currently in use, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told RIA state news agency in remarks published this morning.

The emergency call line was created after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It is seen as the most famous of the US-Russia hotlines, formally known in the US as the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link.