North Korean troops have been pulled back from the frontline amid devastating losses, according to Ukrainian and American officials.

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Downing Street has condemned a Russian arrest warrant issued for a UK journalist, calling it an example of “desperate rhetoric” from Vladimir Putin’s administration.

A court in Russia’s Kursk border region has issued an arrest warrant for Jerome Starkey, defence editor at The Sun, and put him on an international wanted list.

The Kursk regional court accused him of illegally crossing the border into Russia.

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Sir Keir Starmer said the UK and Germany shared a “common approach on key issues and challenges”, including the war in Ukraine.

Ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Prime Minister said the two countries had made “great strides” in science and technology.

Sir Keir said: “I’m very much looking forward to coming for the dinner on Monday on the eve of the EU Council, and of course the wider reset in relations between the UK and EU.”

Mr Scholz said that his visit to Chequers was “a good sign of the very good relations between our two countries, and indeed between the two of us”.

Sir Keir and Mr Scholz then enjoyed a private walk through the estate grounds before having lunch in the dining room, spending around two-and-a-half hours together.Starmer praises ‘real progress’ in UK’s ties with Germany

North Korean troops have been pulled back from the frontline amid devastating losses, according to Ukrainian and American officials.

Kim Jong Un’s forces have not been seen on the battlefield for around three weeks, Ukrainian special forces said, according to the New York Times.

Pyongyang sent roughly 11,000 soldiers to help with Vladimir Putin’s war effort in November last year, four months after Kyiv’s troops seized Russian territory in Kursk.

They quickly gained a reputation as being fierce, “committed” soldiers, who would often choose suicide over surrender, but were hampered by poor tactics and a language barrier.

In January, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said 300 of Kim’s soldiers have been killed and another 2,700 wounded since joining the conflict.

Competing claims emerged over a deadly attack on a boarding school in Sudzha, a city in Russia’s Kursk region that has been under Ukrainian control for five months, with Ukraine and Russia accusing each other of carrying out the strike.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Saturday night that four people were killed and a further four seriously wounded in the strike, with 84 people rescued by Ukrainian servicemen from the rubble of the building. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Moscow had bombed the boarding school where civilians were sheltering and preparing to evacuate.

The General Staff said those in need of additional medical assistance were evacuated to medical facilities in Ukraine.

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Ryanair are plotting to resume flights to Ukraine as hopes continue to rise that President Donald Trump will be able to push for an end to the conflict.

The Telegraph reported that Michael O’Leary, the airline’s chief executive, said Ryanair was developing a blueprint to allow flights to resume, with hopes they could be running within six weeks of a ceasefire.

Mr O’Leary said: “I would very much hope it’s this year. I think one of the things that Trump can deliver, hopefully, would be an earlier resolution of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.”

Mr Trump has promised to bring an end to the nearly three-year-long conflict, by imposing sweeping tariffs and sanctions on Putin, and has said that the White House are in discussions with Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack on a boarding school in Sudzha, some 12 km (7.5 miles) from the border with Ukraine, showed how Russia fights the war.

“They destroyed the building even though dozens of civilians were there,” Zelenskiy wrote on the X social media platform.

“This is how Russia waged war against Chechnya decades ago. They killed Syrians the same way. Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian homes the same way.”

Russia’s Defence Ministry said early on Sunday on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had launched “a targeted missile strike on a boarding school in the city of Sudzha” from Ukrainian territory.

In a statement, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the strike a “terrorist attack” and vowed to bring Kyiv to justice.

Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine came under multiple Ukrainian drone attacks on Sunday, and two civilians were killed, the regional governor said.

One man was killed in the village of Malinovka about 8 km (5 miles) east of the border overnight, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Several other settlements came under Ukrainian attack on Sunday morning. Later in the day, a woman died in hospital and another civilian suffered injuries after a passenger car came under a drone attack, Gladkov said.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed 44 Ukrainian drones over the last 24 hours.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Competing claims emerged over a deadly attack on a boarding school in Sudzha, a city in Russia’s Kursk region that has been under Ukrainian control for five months, with Ukraine and Russia accusing each other of carrying out the strike.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Saturday night that four people were killed and a further four seriously wounded in the strike, with 84 people rescued by Ukrainian servicemen from the rubble of the building.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Moscow had bombed the boarding school where civilians were sheltering and preparing to evacuate.

The General Staff said those in need of additional medical assistance were evacuated to medical facilities in Ukraine.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in the early hours of Sunday that it was Ukrainian forces that had launched a missile strike on the school, saying that the missiles were launched from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Ukrainian air defences downed 40 out of 55 drones launched by Russia during its latest overnight attack, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday.

It added that another 13 had been “locationally lost” and did not reach their targets, typically a reference to electronic jamming.