War in Ukraine: attack on the TurkSteam gas pipeline, North Korean soldiers asked to commit suicide… an update on the situation

Le Kremlin dénonce un acte de “terrorisme énergétique” de l’Ukraine après une attaque visant le gazoduc TurkStream. imageBROKER.com – imageBROKER/Timon Schneider

Tous les jours, Midi Libre fait le point sur la situation en Ukraine. Ce lundi 13 janvier 2025, découvrez les dernières actualités autour de ce conflit.

Russia said on Monday that it had shot down nine Ukrainian drones that were attempting to attack part of the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline, a route for transporting Russian gas to Turkey and Europe.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the attack targeted a compressor station in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, but that the facility was operating normally and there were no casualties. Reuters could not independently confirm the incident and Ukraine did not immediately comment. TurkStream and Blue Stream, which pass under the Black Sea to Turkey, are the last remaining routes for Russian gas to Europe after Ukraine earlier this year refused to renew a five-year transit agreement that had allowed Russia to continue shipping gas through its territory despite the war.

The Russian statement said fragments from a drone struck the building and caused minor damage to equipment at a gas metering station near the compressor, but emergency crews quickly repaired it. The pipeline runs from the Russian Russkaya Compressor Station outside the city of Anapa to Kıyıköy in Turkey and then to Europe. Compressor stations serve to stabilize the pressure and flow of the gas. (Reporting by Volodya Soldatkin; writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Kate Entringer)

Soldiers urged to commit suicide

North Korea is encouraging its soldiers deployed to Russia to fight Ukraine to commit suicide to avoid capture, a South Korean lawmaker reported Monday, citing Seoul’s intelligence agency. Neither Russia nor North Korea has responded to the request.

“Notes found on dead soldiers indicate that North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide,”, including by “blowing themselves up […] before capture,” Lee Seong-kweun told reporters, citing South Korean intelligence.

Some 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed out of thousands deployed by Pyongyang in Russia to support its war against Ukraine, a South Korean lawmaker said Monday, citing Seoul's intelligence service. “Estimates indicate that the number of casualties among the North Korean forces has exceeded 3,000, including about 300 dead and 2,700 wounded,” Lee Seong-kweun told reporters after a briefing by South Korea's intelligence service.

For the first time, Ukraine has an advantage

According to a Russian blogger, reported by the media outlet Forbes, for the first time since the start of the war, the Ukrainians have a real advantage over the Russians in terms of tank deployment, but only on 1,300 kilometers of the line of front.

Indeed, Ukrainian tanks operate “more freely” according to the blogger thanks to the use of sophisticated drones. “The enemy (Ukraine, editor's note) has achieved sufficient scale and variety in its drones and has perfected its tactics for using them,” he explains. Russian tanks cannot “reach the front line to launch an attack”, since their tanks can “operate only from covered positions”, the Russian blogger explains.

The Russians, however, cannot do the same, because Ukrainian airspace is much safer with radios that allow intensive jamming of the airspace.