Closing summary
Vladimir Putin praised North Korea for “firmly supporting” Moscow’s war in Ukraine, as he travelled to Pyongyang to seek continued military support from the isolated country. In his first visit to North Korea since 2000, Putin will meet Kim Jong-un for one-on-one talks on Tuesday evening (local time). Putin vowed to deepen trade and security ties with North Korea and to support it against the US. The US state department said it was “quite certain” Putin would be seeking arms to support his war in Ukraine. In a letter published by North Korean state media ahead of his planned visit, the Russian president wrote: “We will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the west, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – we will build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.” Tomorrow will be the key day of his state visit, when there will be an official ceremony and Putin will reportedly receive a guard of honour.
South Korean defence minister Shin Wonsik said in an interview with Bloomberg News that Seoul had identified at least 10,000 shipping containers suspected to be containing artillery ammunition and other weapons sent from North Korea to Russia. Those containers could contain as much as 4.8m shells, Shin said.
China urged Nato to “stop shifting blame” over the war in Ukraine after the western military alliance’s chief accused Beijing of worsening the conflict through support of Russia.
Hungary and Slovakia gave their support to the candidacy of Mark Rutte as the next secretary-general of Nato, an important step for the outgoing Dutch prime minister towards securing the top job. Nato takes decisions by consensus, so any candidate needs the support of all 32 allies. Only Romania, whose President Klaus Iohannis is also vying for the job, is still opposed to Rutte’s candidacy.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for an overnight drone attack on an oil facility in Russia’s Rostov region that started a massive blaze in the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.
Thank you for following today’s latest news. This blog is closing now but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
Updated
Viktor Orbán confirms support for Mark Rutte as next Nato chief
Hungary’s prime minister, has said he supports outgoing Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte to replace Jens Stoltenberg as Nato’s next secretary general (see earlier post at 09.34 for more details).
Rutte would be the fourth Dutchman to hold the post if he is chosen as the alliance’s 13th secretary general. He must now only secure the backing of Romania, whose President Klaus Iohannis also wants the role.
Hungary’s backing follows a meeting Orbán had with Stoltenberg last week, in which the two sides agreed that Hungary would not block Nato decisions on providing support for Ukraine but has agreed that it would not be involved.
Following the recent European elections, where Hungarians voted in huge numbers in favour of #peace, we reached an important agreement with #NATO Secretary General @jensstoltenberg . We agreed that no Hungarian personnel will take part in the activities of NATO in Ukraine and no… pic.twitter.com/Cliu4rZGCE
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) June 18, 2024
Slovakia also gave its support to Rutte today. Orbán had earlier opposed Rutte’s candidacy because he had expressed “problematic” opinions that included the idea that Hungary should leave the EU.
Updated
While Vladimir Putin deepens his ties with North Korea, about 9,000 troops from 20 Nato countries have been participating this month in military exercises in the Baltic Sea region, which has become strategically sensitive following Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Sweden, which had joined the drills in the past, took part in the Baltops exercises for the first time in June as a full Nato member after joining the transatlantic military alliance earlier this year. The weeks of training include sea mine sweeps, submarine detection, landings and medical response to mass casualty situations.
The exercises by navy, air force and ground troops are being held on the Baltic Sea, as well as in Sweden and its strategic island of Gotland, and in Lithuania, Poland and Germany. They will run to Thursday and include about 50 navy ships and 45 aircraft and helicopters.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said that the country’s first vice foreign minister, Kim Hong-kyun, and the US deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, discussed Vladimir Putin’s trip to North Korea in an emergency phone call last week.
According to BBC News, Campbell told Kim that Washington backs Seoul’s stance that Putin’s visit should not result in a “further deepening of military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow in a way that undermines regional peace and stability in violation of UN security council resolutions”.
The White House said on Monday that Washington is apprehensive over closer ties between Russia and North Korea.
“We’re not concerned about the trip [by Putin],” national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters Monday. “What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between these two countries.”
Kirby said the worry was not just that “North Korean ballistic missiles are still being used to hit Ukrainian targets, but because there could be some reciprocity here that could affect security on the Korean peninsula”.
Updated
Russia has turned increasingly to blackmail and financial incentives to hire Germans to spy for it after the blow dealt to its intelligence services by Europe’s expulsion of some 600 Russian diplomats, Germany’s domestic security service said.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said Russian intelligence services were spending big to recruit agents in Germany despite Western attempts to limit their operations since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia is working hard to compensate for the German government’s reduction in the number of Russian agents in Germany,” BfV chief Thomas Haldenwang told a news conference on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Two German citizens who were charged last August with high treason for spying for Russia had each been paid an estimated 400,000 euros ($428,560) for their services, the BfV said.
“The agent fees show that Russia’s services continue to have enormous financial resources with which to pursue their intelligence goals,” it added in the report.
Particularly at risk of being targeted by Russian security services were Germans who lived in Russia or regularly travelled there, including German diplomats, who could easily be made vulnerable to blackmail attempts.
“As soon as they have compromising information about their targets, these services are not shy about employing aggressive recruitment techniques,” they added.
Earlier this month, NATO also reaffirmed its concerns about Russian espionage and called for tougher action in response to what it said was a campaign of hostile activities including acts of sabotage and cyber attacks. Germany is one of 32 NATO states.
An Estonian court has sentenced a Russian citizen to six years and three months in jail for spying, the country’s public broadcaster ERR reported.
Viacheslav Morozov, a former professor of political theory at the University of Tartu, was arrested in January and accused of gathering information about Estonia’s internal, defence and security policy, as well as people and infrastructure related to it, ERR said.
He was also accused of conveying information about Estonia’s political situation, relationships with allies, integration and social cohesion, Reuters reported.
A veteran professor who had previously taught Russian-EU studies at the university, Morozov was well known for his research into Russian political identity and foreign policy.
Updated
China accounts for more than 90% of North Korea’s trade and has been its most dependable aid donor and diplomatic ally. But as Vladimir Putin’s imminent visit to Pyongyang proves, the secluded state’s behaviour is being increasingly influenced by its security and economic ties with Russia.
The Guardian’s Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry, explores the deepening relationship between Russia and North Korea here:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has expressed gratitude to those who have signed the communique from the Ukraine peace summit held in Switzerland over the weekend, as he hopes for more countries to add their names to it.
I am grateful to the Ecumenical Patriarchate for joining the Global Peace Summit communique.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 18, 2024
The document remains open for signatures, and I am confident that more countries and international organizations will join it. We continue to work to rally the world around the goal of…
Key regional powers including Brazil, India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia failed to sign up to the joint communique issued at the end of the Ukraine peace conference (you can read more here).
The final text was signed by more than 80 countries and international organisations, including the three main EU institutions and 27 EU member states. It said the UN charter, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states “can and will serve as a basis in achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine”.
Updated
France has signed a contract to sell Caesar self-propelled howitzers to Armenia, defence minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday, in a further sign of the country’s deepening ties with the west.
Lecornu posted on X that the contract was signed during a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Suren Papikyan. He did not say how many systems Armenia would acquire.
Nous continuons de renforcer notre relation de défense avec l’Arménie.
— Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) June 18, 2024
Entretien chaleureux et productif avec mon homologue 🇦🇲@papikyan_suren, en marge d’Eurosatory.
Nouveau jalon important avec la signature d'un contrat pour l’acquisition de canons CAESAR. pic.twitter.com/WT7wpSxo6f
Armenia is formally allied to Russia, but has in recent years pivoted diplomatically and militarily towards western countries, accusing Moscow of failing to protect it from longtime rival Azerbaijan. Russia has rejected the criticism, and warned Armenia against flirting with the west.
The Pacific Fleet of the Russian navy will hold exercises between 18 and 28 June in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, Tass state news agency reported on Tuesday.
The drills reportedly involve about 40 ships, boats and support vessels, about 20 naval aircraft and helicopters, including long-range anti-submarine aircraft Tu-142M3, Il-38 and Il-38N, as well as anti-submarine and search and rescue helicopters.
The news comes a day after Russian navy vessels left Havana, having arrived at the Cuban capital’s harbour last week in a move widely seen as a Russian show of force.
China urges Nato to 'stop shifting blame' over war in Ukraine
China has urged Nato to “stop shifting blame” over the war in Ukraine after the western military alliance’s chief accused Beijing of worsening the conflict through support of Russia.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, on Monday called for China to face consequences for what US officials have called a major export push to rebuild Russia’s defence industry.
G7 foreign ministers have expressed “strong concern” about transfers of dual use materials and weapons components from Chinese businesses to Russia being used by Moscow for its military expansion.
On Tuesday, Beijing hit back, saying Nato “should engage in self-reflection rather than arbitrary smears and attacks on China”.
“We advise (Nato) to stop shifting blame and sowing discord, not add fuel to the fire and instigate confrontation, but rather do something practical for the political settlement of the crisis,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told journalists.
Domestically, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has framed Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – which he describes as a special military operation – as a defensive move against an expanding Nato.
Updated
The BBC’s live blog has an interesting post on where Vladimir Putin may be staying during his rare trip to North Korea. It reads:
There are reports Putin will be staying at the Kumsusan guesthouse in Pyongyang, which also housed Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a 2019 state visit to North Korea in 2019.
The mansion is located near the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where Kim Jong-un’s father Kim Jong Il, and grandfather Kim Il Sung, lie in state.
According to specialist site NK News, the guesthouse was built over a few months, just in time for Xi’s visit.
Photos of the guest house interior from North Korean state media showed plush red couches, wood panel walls, and a mirrored ceiling with chandeliers.
A drone attack that set on fire oil storage sites in Russia’s southern Rostov region overnight was conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), an intelligence source has told Reuters.
Russian officials said earlier that several oil storage tanks had caught fire after a drone attack in the town of Azov.
The source told Reuters the attack struck the Azovskaya and Azovnefteprodukt depots that have a total of 22 fuel tanks. These claims have not been independently verified by the Guardian.
But according to the Associated Press, a Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack was a SBU special operation.
Updated
Nato’s outgoing secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said that more than 20 of the alliance’s 32 members were on track to meet a decade-old pledge to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence.
Stoltenberg told the US president, Joe Biden, at the White House that the number of Nato allies now meeting that spending target compares to less than 10 members five years ago.
In a meeting with Biden, in the Oval Office, Stoltenberg said:
Twenty-three allies are going to spend two% of GDP or more on defence this year.
Nato allies are this year increasing defence spending by 18%. That’s the biggest increase in decades.
Great to be back in the 🇺🇸 and meet @POTUS to prepare our #NATOSummit in July, where we will strengthen support to #Ukraine. Today we published new numbers on defence spending, showing 23 #NATO Allies now spend 2% of GDP on defence. pic.twitter.com/h0HBAKd6f1
— Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) June 17, 2024
Next month Nato hosts its annual summit in Washington DC against a backdrop of the American election, which many pollsters say is too close to call at this stage.
The former US president Donald Trump, who is challenging Biden to the White House again, has repeatedly voiced scepticism about the value of the alliance and complained about levels of defence spending by its mostly European members.
South Korea identifies 10,000 shipping containers containing suspected artillery ammunition
Andrew Roth is the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent
South Korean defence minister Shin Wonsik said in an interview with Bloomberg News that Seoul had identified at least 10,000 shipping containers suspected to be containing artillery ammunition and other weapons sent from North Korea to Russia.
Those containers could contain as much as 4.8m shells, Shin said. EU countries have struggled to meet the goal of supplying 1m artillery shells to Ukraine over the past year, sending just half of that amount.
“Putin is expected to seek closer security cooperation with North Korea, especially military supplies such as artillery shells that are necessary to seize a chance to win,” Shin told Bloomberg News.
Vladimir Putin made a stop-off in Russia’s far east on Tuesday en route to a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, Russian state media reported.
Putin’s trip to the diamond-producing Republic of Sakha, Russia’s largest region by area, was his first visit there since 2014, Tass news agency said.
He was due to hold a series of meetings, including with the regional leader, before flying to North Korea later on Tuesday for talks likely to include the signing of a partnership agreement with the isolated country.
It is unclear what time exactly the Russian leader will be arriving in Pyongyang today. It is expected to be in the evening, local time. Tomorrow will be the key day of his state visit, when there will be an official ceremony and Putin will reportedly receive a guard of honour.
The last time Putin visited North Korea on a presidential trip was in 2000, when he met Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il.
Updated
Nato’s outgoing secretary general has called for China to face consequences if it keeps up support to Russia as he trumpeted a sharp increase in allies’ defence spending since the invasion of Ukraine.
Jens Stoltenberg said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit this week to North Korea, which has supplied shells to Moscow despite being under UN sanctions, further showed how Moscow was “dependent” on authoritarian leaders.
Stoltenberg said that Kyiv needed predictable and steady military funding as he hailed the uptick in Nato member defence budgets – addressing a key factor behind Donald Trump’s skepticism about helping Ukraine.
Nato next month celebrates its 75th anniversary with a summit in Washington that aims to send a decisive long-term message of support for Ukraine ahead of President Joe Biden’s reelection fight against Republican candidate Trump in November.
“The more credible our long-term support, the quicker Moscow will realize it cannot wait us out,” Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, said on a visit to the US capital to lay the groundwork.
“It may seem like a paradox, but the path to peace is more weapons for Ukraine,” he said.
In 2023, Stoltenberg was asked to extend his tenure as Nato’s secretary general for a further year until October 2024 after members of the western military alliance failed to agree on a replacement.
It was reported earlier today that Hungary had dropped its opposition to Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte as the next Nato secretary-general. Slovakia is also prepared to support Rutte as the next Nato chief, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini said on Tuesday.
Putin plans to build architecture of 'indivisible security in Eurasia'
Here are some quotes from Vladimir Putin’s letter published by North Korean state media ahead of his planned visit to North Korea later today. He wrote:
We will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the west, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions.
And at the same time – we will build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.
The Russian president also vowed support for Pyongyang’s efforts to defend its interests despite what he called “US pressure, blackmail and military threats”. The letter was printed in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party mouthpiece.
North Korean state media also published articles praising Russia and supporting Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which was launched in February 2022.
“The Korean people will always be on the side of the Russian government and people, extending full support and solidarity to their struggle to defend the national sovereignty and security interests,” the Korean Central news agency (KCNA) said in a commentary.
US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller repeated charges on Monday that North Korea had supplied “dozens of ballistic missiles and over 11,000 containers of munitions to Russia” for use in Ukraine.
He said the US had seen Putin “get incredibly desperate over the past few months” and look to Iran and North Korea to make up for equipment lost on the battlefield. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied arms transfers.
White House 'concerned' about 'deepening relationship' between Russia and North Korea
Andrew Roth is the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent
The White House said on Monday that Washington is apprehensive over closer ties between Russia and North Korea.
“We’re not concerned about the trip [by Putin],” national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters Monday. “What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between these two countries.”
Kirby said the worry was not just that “North Korean ballistic missiles are still being used to hit Ukrainian targets, but because there could be some reciprocity here that could affect security on the Korean peninsula”.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. The time has just gone past 10:30am in Kyiv.
Vladimir Putin has praised North Korea for “firmly supporting” Moscow’s war in Ukraine, in an article written for Korea’s Central news agency (KCNA) ahead of a rare diplomatic visit to Pyongyang on Tuesday.
“We highly appreciate that the DPRK (North Korea) is firmly supporting the special military operations of Russia being conducted in Ukraine,” the Russian president wrote.
The two countries are “now actively developing the many-sided partnership,” Putin wrote, pointing to, for example, the fact that Moscow and Kim Jong-un’s regime have been “maintaining the common line and stand at the UN”.
The trip “will put bilateral cooperation on to a higher level with our joint efforts and this will contribute to developing reciprocal and equal cooperation between Russia and the DPRK,” the Russian leader wrote, according to KCNA.
Putin is expected to arrive in North Korea this evening (local time) for his first visit to the isolated country in 24 years, and will stay for about a day before departing to Vietnam.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un extended an invitation to Putin during a visit to Russia’s far east last September.
North Korea has supplied Russia with millions of rounds of Soviet-era artillery munitions as a crucial lifeline to prop up the Russian military campaign in Ukraine. The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, last month told lawmakers that the supplies of munitions and missiles, as well as Iranian drones, had helped the Russian military “get back up on their feet”.
North Korea has also provided Russia with ballistic missiles and electronic equipment used in the war effort. In return, Russia is believed to have provided aid to North Korea’s satellite programme, as well as other arms, economic aid and diplomatic support (you can read more on the story here).
We’ll bring you the latest on Putin’s visit as it happens. In other developments:
An overnight drone attack set several oil storage tanks ablaze near the town of Azov in southern Russia on Tuesday, sparking a large fire, local officials said. “Oil product tanks caught fire in Azov as a result of a drone attack. According to preliminary data, there were no casualties,” the governor of the local Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, wrote on Telegram.
Hungary has dropped its opposition to Mark Rutte as the next Nato secretary-general, Dutch media reported on Tuesday, after the outgoing Dutch prime minister and his Hungarian counterpart met on the sidelines of a EU leaders meeting in Brussels. Citing sources, Dutch outlets NOS and RTL reported that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán did not reiterate his demand for an apology from Rutte for what Orban described last month as “problematic” opinions on Hungary. The apology had been one of the two conditions Hungary had put forward for approving Rutte as the successor to Jens Stoltenberg at the helm of Nato. The other – the guarantee that Hungary would not have to provide funding for Ukraine or send personnel to the war-torn country – was met last week by Stoltenberg, Reuters reported.
A Russian occupation official said on Monday that fighting was gripping parts of Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, with Ukraine’s military pouring men and equipment into the contested area. “There is fighting still going on in the Kharkiv sector. The fiercest clashes are in Vovchansk and near Lyptsy,” Vitaly Ganchev told Russian news agencies.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian forces were gradually pushing Russian troops out of parts of Kharkiv they have fought over since May. His top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, predicted the Russians would try to press forward pending the arrival in Ukraine of sophisticated western equipment, including US-made F-16 fighter jets. Syrskyi also said Russian forces were concentrating their firepower on the Donetsk region, particularly on the Pokrovsk front.
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