Zelensky says Russia deploying North Korean missiles in Zaporizhzhia strikes

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia used North Korean missiles in overnight strikes on Zaporizhzhia that killed at least six people and injured 19 others, as both sides continued exchanging attacks across the front line.

In a video address Monday evening, Zelensky said Russia has reached a point where it “cannot wage war without reinforcements from North Korea” for the first time. He warned that continued use of North Korean missiles and troops inside Ukraine and across Europe allows Pyongyang to identify and fix weaknesses in its weapons systems, calling this a growing danger that extends beyond the immediate conflict.

Zaporizhzhia regional governor Ivan Fedorov shared images of burning vehicles and damaged buildings, saying Russian forces struck the city with missiles and guided bombs. He said the attack damaged industrial sites, infrastructure and non residential buildings across the city, in addition to causing casualties.

The strikes followed a separate wave of Ukrainian drone attacks that killed at least 13 people, including a child, in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, located more than 1,100 kilometers, or roughly 680 miles, from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine’s Armed Forces said the strikes hit the city’s Tanevo oil refinery, and verified social media footage showed large plumes of smoke and daytime flames at the site as air raid sirens sounded nearby. Officials said at least 75 people were injured in that attack, which ranks among the deadliest single strikes on Russian territory since the full scale invasion began in 2022. Uzbekistan’s consulate in Tatarstan said seven of those killed held Uzbek citizenship.

In Kyiv, air raid sirens sounded twice overnight and explosions struck the outskirts of the capital, sparking fires and injuring one person. A strike also damaged a hospital in the city, though officials said staff and patients had already moved to shelter. Separate strikes on power substations in Kherson and Kharkiv caused outages in both cities. In Sumy, a Russian drone strike injured two women, aged 52 and 66, according to Sergiy Kryvosheenko, head of the Sumy City Military Administration. He said both were treated at the scene and that the strike also damaged civilian vehicles, warehouse buildings and other infrastructure.

Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 120 drones overnight along with a mix of missile types, though for the first time authorities did not disclose how many missiles were fired or intercepted. The omission followed a statement from Ukraine’s Air Force on Monday asking media outlets to avoid sensationalized coverage or pessimistic framing regarding the country’s shortage of air defence interceptors.

Ukraine also struck Russian territory overnight, hitting warehouses belonging to online retailer Wildberries in the Voronezh region in southern Russia. Wildberries, often described as Russia’s answer to Amazon, has faced repeated attacks on its facilities in recent weeks. The company has not confirmed the latest strike but said it evacuated facilities in the border region as a precaution. In July, Ukrainian drone strikes on several Wildberries warehouses disrupted operations for a large number of small and medium sized Russian businesses. Kyiv said at the time that it was targeting logistics hubs Russian buyers used to acquire military equipment, part of a broader effort to disrupt supply lines feeding the Russian military.

In his Monday address, Zelensky also praised a separate strike on a Russian petrochemical plant in western Siberia, calling it a significant achievement for Ukraine’s military. He pledged additional long range Ukrainian strikes intended to convince Russia and the Russian public that peace remains necessary.

This is not the first time Zelensky has raised alarm over North Korean military support for Russia. He said over the weekend that as many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to fight alongside Russian forces, part of a growing pattern of cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang that Ukrainian officials say is reshaping the battlefield and raising broader security concerns well beyond the immediate conflict.