Ukraine updates: Putin slams Zelenskyy's nuclear comments

• Vladimir Putin says any Ukrainian attempt at acquiring nuclear weapons would be met with retaliation
• Kyiv says it does not seek nuclear weapons
• Russia claims to have recaptured a village in Kursk
• Russia returns bodies of 501 fallen soldiers to Ukraine

Here are the main developments on Russia's war in Ukraine from Friday, October 18:

10/18/2024October 18, 2024

North Korea sent troops to Russia — Seoul

South Korea's intelligence agency said on Friday that North Korea had sent around 1,500 special forces troops to Russia to help with the war effort in Ukraine.

It said the troops were an initial contingent from a total of around 11,000 troops who were set to serve alongside Russian forces.

Russia has previously denied using North Korean troops in the war.

10/18/2024October 18, 2024

Russia claims gains in Kursk region

The Russian army said on Friday that it had recaptured some Ukrainian-occupied villages in the Kursk region.

Ukrainian forces began an incursion into Russia's Kursk region in August to disrupt Russian military logistics and hold onto a bargaining chip for potential negotiations in future.

Russia's state-run TASS news agency said Ukrainian soldiers had fled their positions near the village of Lyubimovka.

Russian media outlet Mash reported heavy Ukrainian losses and said the Russian army had killed some 50 people and taken dozens of prisoners.

The claims could not be independently verified and there was no confirmation from the Ukrainian side.

10/18/2024October 18, 2024

Russia returns 501 dead soldiers to Ukraine

Russia returned the bodies of 501 dead soldiers to Ukraine on Friday, the Ukrainian government said.

The move appears to be the largest repatriation of war dead since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Most of the soldiers were killed in action in the eastern Donetsk region, according to Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Forensic experts will now identify the victims, who will then be returned to their families for burial.

10/18/2024October 18, 2024

Putin calls Zelenskyy's nuclear comments 'a dangerous provocation'

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday after he commented about the hypothetical need for a nuclear deterrent.

 At a meeting of NATO defense ministers a day earlier, Zelenskyy had said that "either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which will serve as protection, or it must be part of some kind of alliance."

"This is a dangerous provocation," Putin said on Friday at a meeting with journalists from the BRICS group of emerging economies. "Any step in this direction will be met with a corresponding reaction."

"It is not difficult to create nuclear weapons in the modern world," Putin added.

"I do not know whether Ukraine is capable of doing it now, it is not so easy for Ukraine of today, but in general there is no great difficulty here."

However, Zelenskyy's chief of staff insisted that the Ukrainian president's comments had been misinterpreted.

"We have not these thoughts about nuclear, we refuse it," Andriy Yermak told a think-tank event in Brussels.

Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Two years later, it agreed to hand these weapons over to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from both Moscow and Washington that its territorial integrity would be respected.

Russia began nuclear weapons exercises near the border with Ukraine earlier this year.

zc/wd (Reuters, AP; AFP, dpa)