Ukraine and Russia barrage each other with dozens of drone attacks

A massive drone strike rattled Moscow and its suburbs overnight into Sunday, injuring several people and temporarily halting traffic at some of Russia's busiest airports, officials reported. Meanwhile, a huge night-time wave of Russian drones targeted Ukraine.

This came after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a pact with North Korea on Saturday night, obliging the two countries to provide immediate military aid using “all means” if either is attacked. The agreement marks the strongest link between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War.

Earlier this week, Ukraine reported that its troops engaged for the first time with North Korean units. U.S. officials earlier confirmed the deployment of at least 3,000 North Korean troops to Russia, while Kyiv has repeatedly said the number is far higher. This has fuelled concerns of a marked escalation in Moscow's war on Ukraine, and tensions spilling over into the Asia-Pacific.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have kept a tight lid on casualty figures since the start of the full-scale war despite regular reports of Russian forces taking huge losses following “human wave” attacks that aim to exhaust Ukrainian defences.

However, the chief of the U.K. defence staff, Tony Radakin, told the BBC that Russian forces had suffered their worst month of casualties in October since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He said Moscow’s troops suffered an average of 1,500 dead and wounded per day, bringing their total losses in the war to 700,000.

According to Radakin, ordinary Russians were paying “an extraordinary price” for the war, even as a gruelling, months-long Russian offensive in Ukraine’s industrial east continues to eke out gains. He did not say how U.K.