North Korean leader Kim Jong Un displayed a new long-range intercontinental ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang that included foreign leaders on Friday. 

The yet-to-be-tested Hwasong-20 was described by the state-owned Korean Central News Agency as having the “most powerful nuclear strategic weapons system.”

The government also displayed shorter-range ballistic, cruise and supersonic missiles at the military parade, which marked 80 years since the founding of the Worker’s Party.

PUTIN, KIM JONG UN BEGIN BILATERAL TALKS IN BEIJING AFTER ATTENDING MASSIVE CHINESE MILTARY PARADE

Kim said at the parade that the military “must continue to evolve into an invincible force that eliminates all threats.”

The foreign dignitaries at the parade included Chinese Premier Li Qiang, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and Vietnam’s Communist Party chief To Lam. 

Kim also met with Medvedev on Friday, who praised the sacrifice of North Korean soldiers fighting with Russia in Ukraine. 

NUCLEAR THREATS FROM NORTH KOREA LOOM QUIETLY BEHIND WARS IN GAZA AND UKRAINE AT UNGA

A North Korean government photo shows what it says is a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Hwasong-20, during a military parade, Friday, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

Kim said he hoped to strengthen ties with Russia and work together toward common goals. 

Last summer, Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong warned the U.S. to not attempt to restart talks centered around denuclearization, adding that Pyongyang would view any attempt to pressure North Korea to denuclearize as “nothing but a mockery.” 

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, fourth right, and Vietnamese General Secretary of Communist Party To Lam, fourth left, hold a meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

“If the U.S. fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK- U.S. meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the U.S. side,” Kim Yo Jong said, referring to the nation by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

Published on
11/10/2025 – 11:25 GMT+2

Around 50 towns in Ukraine’s Odesa region were left without power on Saturday morning following an overnight Russian drone attack on energy infrastructure, according to regional authorities.

Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK reported that power has since been restored to the 240,000 households affected.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper said that besides energy infrastructure, two residential buildings and a hotel were damaged. One person, a 47-year-old woman, was injured.

Power was also restored to over 800,000 Kyiv residents on Saturday, following a separate attack by Russia on the Ukrainian power grid a day earlier, which caused blackouts across much of the country.

DTEK that “the main work to restore the power supply” had been completed, but that some localiSed outages were still affecting the Ukrainian capital following Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the attack as “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Ukraine’s air force said Saturday that its air defenses intercepted or jammed 54 of 78 Russian drones launched against Ukraine overnight, while Russia’s defence ministry said it had shot down 42 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Over the past day, at least four people were killed and 18 injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine, according to regional authorities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday accused Russia of “taking advantage” of the world focusing its attentions on the Middle East to intensity attacks on Ukraine and target energy facilities. He said “this is a new record of Russian cowardice – to intensify terrorist attacks at such a moment, to strike at the lives of our people.”

“There can be only one response to this,” he added, “and that is more force, more air defence to protect our critical infrastructure and more pressure on Russia to make them truly accountable for everything they do.”

The energy sector has been a key battleground since Russia launched its all-out invasion more than three years ago.

Each year, Russia has tried to cripple the Ukrainian power grid before the bitter winter season, apparently hoping to erode public morale. Winter temperatures run from late October through March, with January and February the coldest months.

Additional sources • AP

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“We have a certain edifice of relations that has cracked and is collapsing,” Ryabkov said. “Now the cracks have reached the foundation.”

PUTIN SAYS COMPLEX ISSUES REQUIRE MORE STUDY

“These are complex issues that require further consideration. But we remain committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage,” Putin told a press conference.

His aide later told the Kommersant newspaper that Russia had agreed to unspecified concessions at the Alaska summit it would be ready to make if Trump got certain things from Ukraine and the Europeans.

Such a contrast in tone among senior officials is rare in Moscow and highlights the delicacy and sensitivity of the twin-track approach Russia is taking – combining flattery and warnings to adapt to diplomatic reversals since the summit.

TRUMP’S FRUSTRATION

There is no new Trump-Putin meeting on the agenda, no date has been set for the next talks on improving ties, and Washington, without an ambassador in Moscow since June, has not sought Russia’s approval to send a successor.

Trump has spoken of possibly supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, hitting a nerve with Putin, who said it would destroy what is left of U.S.-Russia ties.

Trump has also said he wants Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to hold direct talks, but there appears no near-term prospect of that happening as the tempo of the war increases.

In a rhetorical U-turn, Trump has suggested Ukraine could win back all its lost territory, while dismissing Russia as “a paper tiger,” a snipe shrugged off by Moscow.

APPEAL TO SHARED VALUES

In response, Russia has tried playing good cop, bad cop – with officials at times appearing to threaten tough responses to U.S. action and at others underlining shared values.

Putin offered to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the last arms control treaty with the U.S. once it expires next year if Washington does the same.

Trump said “it sounds like a good idea,” but there has been no formal U.S. response.

Putin on Friday praised Trump’s credentials as a potential Nobel Peace Prize laureate, saying his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine were sincere and that his Middle East mediation initiative was already an achievement and would be “an historic event” if he was able to see it through to the end.

Trump took to social media to show he had noted the praise: “Thank you to President Putin!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s presidential envoy, said Moscow appreciated Melania Trump’s “humanitarian leadership.”

At a foreign policy conference this month, Putin also went out of his way to make a series of U.S.-focused statements likely to appeal to Trump.

Putin praised Michael Gloss, the son of a CIA official killed in Ukraine fighting on Russia’s side, saying he represented “the core of the MAGA movement, which supports President Trump.”

He also condemned the murder of Trump ally Charlie Kirk, saying Kirk had defended the “traditional values” which he said Gloss and Russian soldiers in Ukraine were giving their lives to defend.

PUSHBACK, WARNINGS AND DISAPPOINTMENT

But warnings have continued, and pushback against Trump’s talk of supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was immediate.

Putin said such a step would require the direct involvement of U.S. military personnel, destroy bilateral relations and usher in a new stage of escalation.

Andrei Kartapolov, who heads Russian parliament’s defence committee, said Moscow would shoot down Tomahawk missiles and bomb their launch sites if the U.S. supplied them, and find a way to retaliate against Washington that hurts.

In other terse comments, Ryabkov said Russia would quickly carry out a nuclear test if the U.S. did the same, and that Moscow would “get by” if Washington did not take up Putin’s nuclear arms control offer.

Ryabkov also backed off a Russian offer to discuss the fate of U.S. nuclear fuel at a nuclear plant Moscow controls in southern Ukraine, and spoke of how Russia was withdrawing from an agreement with the U.S. to destroy weapons-grade plutonium.

“After the summit in Alaska, there was hope that Trump was ready to continue dialogue with Russia and take our interests into account,” wrote Andrei Baranov, a commentator for pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“Donald has now thoroughly disappointed us with his trademark inconsistency.”

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