Ukraine updates: 10 held by Russia, Belarus return to Kyiv

Seven people, including two children, were killed and 10 others were wounded in a Russian attack on the town of Vilniansk, near the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, the head of the regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on social media. 

"A critical infrastructure facility, a shop and residential buildings were damaged," Fedorov added. 

Vilniansk is 29 kilometers (roughly 18 miles) northeast of the city of Zaporizhzhia, the main regional city under Ukrainian control. Russia says it has annexed the Zaporizhzhia region, despite not controlling it fully. 

Russia has attacked Zaporizhzhia and nearby towns throughout its offensive, but in recent weeks has focused its efforts on the east of the country rather than the south.

Belarus has deployed additional air defense forces to its border with Ukraine to protect "critical infrastructure facilities" because of increased Ukrainian drone activity in the area, a Belarusian military commander has said.

Belarus, an ally of Russia in its war with Ukraine, said earlier this week that it had shot down a quadcopter that had illegally crossed the border from Ukraine "to collect information about Belarusian border infrastructure."

The Defense Ministry said earlier on Saturday it had information that Ukraine had moved more troops, weapons and military equipment to the northern Zhytomyr region, which borders Belarus.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has rejected Belarusian claims of possible incursions across their common border.

Ukraine does not pose a threat, but is rather strengthening its lines of defense along the border, said border guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko in Kyiv.

"The real threat comes from Belarus, there are enough Russian troops stationed there," said Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security Council.

The United Nations Security Council has been told that weapons used in attacks in Ukraine were "irrefutably" produced by North Korea.

Jonah Leff, executive director of the UK-based Conflict Armament Research NGO, gave the council a detailed analysis of the remnants of the missile that struck Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, on January 2.

Leff said the missile's rocket motor, its tail section and almost 300 components were made by 26 companies from eight countries and territories.

The end product was either a KN-23 or KN-24 missile manufactured in 2023 in North Korea, he added.

"Following the initial documentation, our teams inspected three additional identical DPRK [North Korean] missiles that struck Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia earlier this year," Leff continued.

They also observed additional conventional weapons seized from the battlefield, including an artillery rocket, that were manufactured by Pyongyang and might have been part of a recent larger consignment.

North Korea has been repeatedly criticized for signing a deal to deliver weapons to Russia for the conflict in Ukraine.

During Friday's Security Council talks, the United States and its Western allies clashed with representatives from Moscow and Pyongyang, saying both countries had violated a UN embargo on arms exports from North Korea.

Russia dismissed the "baseless accusations," and North Korea dismissed the meeting as "an extremely brazen act" to discuss "someone's alleged 'weapon transfers.'"

Russian forces have taken control of Rozdolivka, a settlement in eastern Ukraine, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.

The ministry said its forces had taken up more favorable positions after pushing Ukrainian troops out of the settlement.

Kyiv has disputed the claim, saying fighting in areas around the settlement was still raging.

"Our soldiers resolutely held their defenses and repelled 15 of the [19] assaults," a report by the Ukrainian military's General Staff said, referring to Russian attacks on a broad area that included Rozdolivka. "Four armed confrontations are continuing."

Rozdolivka is located in the Donetsk region, the focal point of Russia's slow advance across eastern Ukraine.

It lies north of Bakhmut and Soledar, two areas brought under Russian control last year after being flattened in months of battles.

Russian forces have captured several villages in eastern regions since they captured the strategic town of Avdiivka in February.

Five people were killed in a drone attack in the Russian region of Kursk, near the border with Ukraine, according to local Russian authorities.

Two small children were among the dead. Alexei Smirnov, governor of the Kursk region, said.

According to Smirnov, a residential building in the village of Gorodishche was struck.

Two seriously injured people were taken to hospital.

Russia's Kursk region, along with Bryansk, Belgorod and Rostov, are close to the border with Ukraine and have been targeted by repeated strikes by Kyiv's forces.

Russia's Ministry of Defense said Saturday that six attacking drones had been shot down overnight in a total of four Russian regions.

The Biden administration will provide Ukraine with $150 million (€140 million) worth of weapons and ammunition, including HAWK air defense interceptors and 155-millimeter artillery munitions, Reuters news agency reported, citing two US officials.

The White House is due to announce the package on Monday, the officials said, following repeated requests by Kyiv for air defense support.

Ukraine's military has said it needs the technology to prevent aerial attacks by Russia on its energy facilities.

The US began shipping HAWK interceptor missiles to Ukraine in 2022 —  an upgrade to the shorter-range shoulder-launched Stinger air defense systems.

The new package will include other munitions and equipment to support Ukraine's defense needs, the sources added.

The military aid comes from a mechanism that allows the US president to quickly transfer defense goods and services from domestic stocks to support allies.

Ten Ukrainians, including a politician and two priests, who were held captive by Russia and Belarus have returned home, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

He thanked the Vatican for its mediation in the release of the civilians. 

Some of those released have been in prison since 2017, Zelenskyy said, arrested in Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine that at the time were run by Moscow-backed separatists.

One of the freed captives was Nariman Dzhelyal, a leader of the Crimean Tatars, who was taken a year before Moscow's forces invaded. He was detained from where he lived in Crimea, despite the peninsula being illegally annexed by Russia a few years earlier.

Five of those liberated had been held in ex-Soviet Belarus, Moscow's closest ally, which allowed the Kremlin to use its territory to help launch the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged hundreds of prisoners throughout the nearly two-and-a-half-year conflict, typically in one-for-one swaps. But the release of civilian prisoners is rarer.

Some 3,310 Ukrainians have already been released from Russian captivity, according to Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. But many thousands, both civilians and military personnel, remain imprisoned.

mm/kb (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)