General Valery Zaluzhny, former head of the armed forces of Ukraine and current ambassador to the United Kingdom, has exposed a very critical situation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with North Korea, Iran and Chinaallies of the Russian president, Vladimir Putinopenly supporting their forces on the battlefield. “I think that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that World War III has begun“he said at the UP100 awards ceremony in kyiv.
According to Zaluzhny, Ukraine is no longer only facing Russia, but “the North Korean soldiers are standing in front of Ukraine,” he assured after intelligence information from Seoul and Washington that indicates that around 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent by the regime of Kim Jong-un to Kursk to fight against the Ukrainian troops deployed there who keep a part of that Russian region under their control.
Likewise, the general has also referred to the Iran support to Russian troops by sending thousands of Shahed attack drones to Moscow, as well as helping with the technology to build drones. Since September, kyiv and the EU have been denouncing Iran’s delivery of ballistic missiles and drones to Russia, which it then uses in military aggression in Ukraine.
“Let’s be honest. Already in Ukraine, The Iranian ‘Shahed’ are killing civilians absolutely openly, without any type of shame,” said Valery Zaluzhny, who also points to the use of Chinese and North Korean weapons against his country.
The war in Ukraine broke out a long time ago more than a thousand days after Putin himself ordered the invasion of his neighboring country at the end of February 2022. Since then, the conflict has progressed without a solution, with the front lines practically stagnant since then, although with clashes also in Russian territory after the Ukrainian raid on Kursk last August.
However, this week there was a new climb after kyiv used long-range Storm Shadow missiles, supplied by the United Kingdom, for the first time in the Russian region of Kursk, bordering Ukraine. Moscow responded a day later by launching a hypersonic ballistic missile against Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s largest cities.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, already indicated this Thursday that the conflict in Ukraine “has acquired global elements“he said during a speech to the nation.
In this context of maximum tension, Zaluzhny has urged Ukraine’s allies to redouble your support to decide the course of the war. “It is still possible to arrest her here, on the territory of Ukraine,” he said. However, he lamented, “for some reason our partners don’t want to understand this.”
Zaluzhny, nicknamed as the “iron general”was dismissed by Zelensky last February as head of Ukraine’s armed forces during a major strategic reorganization by the Ukrainian president, and a month later was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom.
He is credited with having stopped and rejected the invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022, which sparked the war in Ukraine, although his popularity was tarnished by the failure of last year’s counteroffensive, as well as differences of opinion with Zelensky.