SEOUL, November 08 (AJP) - Russia used North Korean-made ballistic missiles in overnight strikes that damaged a key Ukrainian energy facility, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday. He called for stronger international sanctions against anyone who helps Moscow wage its war.
President Zelensky said Russia fired 36 ballistic missiles and 172 drones at Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight. Ukrainian air defenses shot down four of the missiles.
"According to preliminary findings, at one of the key energy facilities that was damaged, the Russians used KN-23 missiles manufactured and supplied by North Korea," President Zelensky wrote on X after chairing a meeting on the damage and repair work. He called it "further proof that global sanctions regimes need to be significantly strengthened," aimed at everyone who provides "services" in destroying lives.
The KN-23, known in North Korea as the Hwasong-11A, is a solid-fuel, short-range ballistic missile. Pyongyang has shipped it to Russia despite United Nations Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from exporting ballistic missiles.
President Zelensky said the strikes hit substations that link the Rivne and Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plants to Kyiv and central Ukraine. Technical assessments are still underway at other sites hit by ballistic missiles.
The president renewed his appeal for interceptor missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system. Ukraine relies on the Patriot to stop ballistic missiles, which fly too fast for most of its other air defenses. On Oct. 30, the U.S. government approved a possible $2.1 billion sale of 500 Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptors to Ukraine.
President Zelensky said Russia had stepped up its attacks on Ukraine and its infrastructure to pressure Kyiv and its allies before next week's talks. Ukrainian, Russian and U.S. delegations are set to meet in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10 and 11, with Washington acting as mediator.
He also warned against plans for Russia to help shape a new security order for Europe, calling the idea complicated and potentially dangerous. In an interview with CNN, which he excerpted on X, President Zelensky said Ukraine does not want a "Yalta 2.0" and does not want to be divided by Russia.
The reference was to the February 1945 Yalta Conference. There, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met to settle Europe's postwar order, and the settlement left much of Eastern Europe under Soviet control.
President Zelensky's remarks came two days after U.S. President Donald Trump met Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy, at the White House. "It's going to be a big agreement, and it's going to involve more than Ukraine," President Trump told reporters Thursday, adding that it "might involve all of Europe." He did not meet the Ukrainian delegation that was also at the White House that day.
North Korea began supplying KN-23 and KN-24 missiles to Russia in late 2023. Ukraine's military intelligence agency says Pyongyang delivered about 150 ballistic missiles through August 2025. The agency said in August this year that a new batch of 40 had arrived, along with a North Korean missile unit of about 90 personnel based in Russia's Voronezh region.
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