Zelenskiy says Russia used North Korean missile in deadly strike

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia used a North Korean missile in a strike on Radushne, a village in the Kryvyi Rih district of Dnipropetrovsk region, killing five members of one family near his hometown. Ukrainian officials said preliminary findings pointed to a North Korean ballistic missile, with additional examinations to follow.

The dead were members of the Voronov family, and the strike left a residential area in ruins. Images from the scene showed emergency personnel working among destroyed homes after the missile hit the village, underscoring how a weapon tied to one of the world’s most heavily sanctioned states reached a civilian target inside Ukraine.

The attack on Radushne was part of a much larger overnight Russian barrage that Ukrainian officials said killed at least eight people across Ukraine. Ukrainian embassy messaging said Russia launched more than 70 missiles and over 280 attack drones, striking Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy and Ivano-Frankivsk region.

If the missile is confirmed as North Korean, the strike would mark the first suspected use of such a weapon in the conflict in nearly a year and would point to a deeper wartime supply chain running beyond Russia’s own stockpiles. For Kyiv and its allies, that matters because the war is no longer only about Russia’s domestic production or battlefield tactics. It is also about how effectively sanctions can block outside suppliers from sustaining Moscow’s missile campaign.

Zelenskiy has been pressing that argument for days. On July 25, he said Russia wanted to bring in 30,000 North Korean troops to the conflict. On July 28, he told Donald Trump and U.S. senators that Ukraine needs anti-ballistic systems and missiles, a request sharpened by repeated Russian barrages that mix missiles and drones in waves.

The possible use of a North Korean ballistic missile also complicates air-defense planning. Different missile types can demand different interception strategies, and each new system Russia fields can expose gaps in existing shields. For U.S. allies watching the war from beyond Ukraine, the strike adds another warning that sanctions enforcement, nonproliferation rules and missile defense are being tested together, not separately.