Ukraine Says Russia Fired North Korean Missiles In Deadly Strike

Russia used North Korean missiles in a deadly attack on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on August 11.

A day of mourning will be held on August 12 following the overnight attack, which regional leader Ivan Fedorov said killed seven people and injured 24 others.

Ukrainian officials said six other people were killed in Russian attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

Zaporizhzhya “was struck with North Korean ballistic missiles, [anti-ship] Zircons, and guided aerial bombs. It was a vicious attack, calculated to inflict maximum damage specifically on civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in social media posts.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces targeted Zaporizhstal, a steel plant in Zaporizhzhya that it claimed produces metal used by Ukraine’s military.

Parent company Metinvest said the strike “caught the workers on their way to shelter immediately after the alarm was raised. Unfortunately, this terrorist attack took the lives of seven members of the Zaporizhstal team.” It said the metallurgical plant’s operations were halted due to damage.

Ukraine is struggling to defend itself as deliveries of US-made Patriot systems and other anti-ballistic interceptor missiles have dwindled.

Russia has fired a number of North Korean missiles since 2023 in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022.

krainian officials said a North Korean missile was apparently used in a Russian attack that killed six members of a family in a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region on July 30.

Last week, Reuters cited a Ukrainian ‌military intelligence official as saying a North Korean missile unit had begun deploying to the Voronezh region in western Russia, and that it could be equipped with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers.

On July 25, Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that “Russia wants to bring in another 30,000 North Korean troops” and that “preparations have been under way in Russia’s Voronezh region since June to receive them.”

In 2024, around 12,000 North Korean troops were deployed in Russia’s Kursk region following a surprise incursion by Ukrainian forces.