Russia claims Selydove as concern rises over N.Korean troops

AFP | Kyiv

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Moscow said yesterday it had seized the war-battered mining town of Selydove in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces are buckling and as concern grows in Kyiv and abroad over North Korea’s expanding military ties with Russia.

The Kremlin’s forces have been advancing rapidly across the sprawling eastern front where exhausted and outgunned Ukrainian troops are having to cede ground, appealing for more Western aid. Russia’s claims that its troops had captured four new settlements in the industrial Donetsk region came as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and South Korean’s president agreed deeper security cooperation after allies said thousands of North Korean troops were transferred to Russia to aid its offensive.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces had “fully liberated” Selydove, a town of Soviet-era buildings whose estimated population of around 21,000 people have fled from Moscow’s drone and rocket attacks. Moscow also said it had wrested control of the nearby villages of Bogoyavlenka, Girnyk and Katerynivka, also in the Donetsk region, which President Vladimir Putin claimed was formally part of Russia in late 2022, the year Moscow invaded.

The gains announced by Moscow yesterday are just the latest in a string of Russian advances that have gained momentum since February with the collapse of Ukraine’s defences in the stronghold town of Avdiivka. Russia has advanced 478 square kilometres (185 square miles) in October alone a record since March 2022 according to an AFP analysis of data from the American Institute for the Study of War.

Two-thirds of the Russian gains or 324 square kilometres were in the Donetsk region. The Russian advances came as Zelensky said he had discussed the deployment of North Korean troops to aid Russia with South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol. Both countries, along with leaders of the NATO military alliance and the United States, are sounding the alarm over the transfer of some 10,000 North Korean troops to Russia.