Zelenskyy says Russia uses North Korean missiles in Ukraine strikes

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of firing North Korean ballistic missiles at Ukraine after overnight attacks killed at least nine civilians, including six people in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Local officials said the Zaporizhzhia attack also wounded 19 people. Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said Russia carried out a “massive” strike using missiles and aerial bombs, hitting industrial facilities, infrastructure and non-residential buildings. He posted photos showing buildings and vehicles on fire and said the strikes caused power outages.

Zelenskyy said the attack on Zaporizhzhia involved ballistic missiles supplied by Pyongyang, a Russian ally. “For the first time,” he said Monday evening, Russia “cannot wage war without reinforcements from North Korea.”

“The more North Korean strikes there are here in Ukraine, in Europe, the more their missiles and soldiers are used, the more they correct their shortcomings and blind spots,” Zelenskyy said, warning that the cooperation could pose a wider danger. CBS News quoted him as saying the threat could grow for “Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and other countries in the region.”

Zelenskyy said Russia has received additional ballistic missiles from North Korea and is preparing to deploy more North Korean troops. Over the weekend, he warned that as many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers were being sent to join the campaign defending Russian territory. He also said Moscow is expanding ballistic missile production and preparing for mobilization. “Every step Russia takes — increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilization — all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2024 pledging mutual aid if either country faced aggression, CBS News reported. The outlet said South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated in December 2024 that more than 1,000 North Korean troops had already been in the war, and Ukraine said in January 2025 it had captured two wounded North Korean soldiers for the first time.

Ukrainian officials said Russia fired 120 drones overnight along with several types of missiles, but they did not provide the number of missiles fired or intercepted. The BBC reported that the omission followed a Ukrainian Air Force statement urging media not to write “sensationalised headlines” or “spread pessimism” about a shortage of air defence interceptors. CBS News and Al Jazeera reported that Ukraine is facing a critical shortage of Patriot interceptors capable of stopping ballistic missiles.

In Kyiv, officials said a strike damaged a hospital while staff and patients were sheltering. Ukraine’s state emergency service said strikes hit a children’s hospital in the Shevchenkivskyi district, caused a warehouse fire and injured one person. Air raid sirens sounded twice in the capital overnight, and explosions were heard on the outskirts.

Three more people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed by Russian drones and artillery in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, local authorities said, according to CBS News. In Mykolaiv, a Russian drone attack injured a 75-year-old woman, Al Jazeera reported. In Sumy, two women, ages 52 and 66, were injured in a Russian drone strike, said Sergiy Kryvosheenko, head of the Sumy City Military Administration. Strikes on substations in Kherson and Kharkiv caused power outages.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its overnight attacks targeted defence industry facilities and transport and logistics centres in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine also struck inside Russia. In the Voronezh region, Governor Alexandr Gusev said a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured two, while falling debris started fires at warehouse facilities. He said Russian air defences destroyed 15 drones over the city of Voronezh and five districts of the region. Wildberries, a major Russian online retailer, said its facilities in the region had been evacuated, though it did not confirm an attack.

Zelenskyy also praised a Ukrainian air strike on a Russian petrochemical plant in western Siberia as a “very significant achievement” and promised “more Ukrainian deep strikes, which should demonstrate to Russia and the Russians that peace is necessary.” The attacks followed Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s Tatarstan region that killed at least 13 people, including a child, and injured at least 75, according to the BBC.