SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed Sunday to respond to what she called a fresh South Korean civilian leafleting campaign, signaling North Korea could soon resume flying trash-carrying balloons across the border.
Beginning in late May, North Korea floated numerous balloons carrying waste paper, scraps of cloth, cigarette butts and even manure toward South Korea in a series of late-night launch events, saying they were a tit-for-tat action against South Korean activists scattering political leaflets via their own balloons. No hazardous materials were found.
In response, South Korea suspended a 2018 tension-reduction deal with North Korea, resuming propaganda broadcasts briefly and frontline live-fire military drills at border areas.
In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong said that “dirty leaflets and things of (the South Korean) scum” were found again in border and other areas in North Korea on Sunday morning.
“Despite the repeated warnings of (North Korea), the (South Korean) scum are not stopping this crude and dirty play,” she said.
“We have fully introduced our countermeasure in such situation. The (South Korean) clans will be tired from suffering a bitter embarrassment and must be ready for paying a very high price for their dirty play,” Kim Yo Jong said.
North Korea last sent rubbish-carrying balloons toward South Korea in late June.
It wasn’t immediately known if, and from which activists’ group in South Korea, balloons were sent to North Korea recently. For years, groups led by North Korean defectors have floated huge balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets, USB sticks containing K-pop songs and South Korean drama, and U.S. dollar bills toward North Korea.
Experts say North Korea views such balloons campaigns as a grave provocation that can threaten its leadership because it bans official access to foreign news for most of its 26 million people.
In 2020, North Korea blew up an empty South Korean-built liaison office on its territory in a furious response to South Korean civilian leafleting campaigns. In 2014, North Korea fired at balloons flying toward its territory and South Korea returned fire, though there were no casualties.
South Korean officials say they don’t restrict activists from flying leaflets to North Korea, in line with a 2023 constitutional court ruling that struck down a contentious law criminalizing such leafleting, calling it a violation of free speech.
Kim Yo Jong's statement came a day after North Korea's Defense Ministry threatened to bolster its nuclear capability and make the U.S. and South Korea pay “an unimaginably harsh price” as it slammed its rivals’ new defense guidelines that it says reveal an intention to invade the North.
This story has been corrected to show that North Korea last sent trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea in late June.
FILE - Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 2, 2019. Kim Yo Jong vowed Sunday, July 14, 2024, to respond to what she called a fresh South Korean civilian leafleting campaign, signaling North Korea would soon resume flying trash-carrying balloons across the border. (Jorge Silva/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - A balloon presumably sent by North Korea, is seen in a paddy field in Incheon, South Korea, on June 10, 2024. Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed Sunday, July 14, 2024, to respond to what she called a fresh South Korean civilian leafleting campaign, signaling North Korea would soon resume flying trash-carrying balloons across the border.(Im Sun-suk/Yonhap via AP, File)
MOSCOW (AP) — Moscow came under one of the largest attacks by Ukrainian drones since the start of fighting in 2022, Russian authorities reported Wednesday, saying they destroyed all of those headed toward the capital.
The drone attacks come as Ukrainian forces are continuing to push into Russia’s western Kursk region. In the past week, they have also struck three bridges, several airfields and an oil depot in a sign they are not letting up on their attacks.
“This was one of the biggest attempts of all time to attack Moscow using drones,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel. He said strong defenses around the capital made it possible to shoot down all the drones before they could hit their intended targets.
Russia said it downed 45 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 11 over the Moscow region. There was no independent information to verify those figures.
Some Russian social media channels shared videos of drones apparently being destroyed by air defense systems, which then set off car alarms.
Ukrainian drone strikes have brought the fight far from the front line into the heart of Russia, targeting the Russian capital and second city St. Petersburg, and an airport in Western Russia, according to Russian officials.
Since the beginning of this year, Ukraine has stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals to slow down the Kremlin’s assault.
A fire at an oil depot targeted by Ukraine burned for the fourth day Wednesday in Rostov, a region in southwestern Russia that borders Ukraine. Priests from the Russian Orthodox Church held a prayer service for injured firefighters as dark plumes of smoke rose in the distance at the oil depot in Proletarsk, according to a photo shared on social media by the Volgodonsk diocese.
Ukraine's daring land incursion into Russia has raised morale in Ukraine with its surprising success and changed the dynamic of the fighting, creating hopes it could hasten an end to the war. But it has opened up another front in a fight where Ukrainian forces were already badly stretched, with active hostilities taking place along more than 970 kilometers (600 miles). The gains in Kursk come as Ukraine continues to lose ground in its eastern industrial region of Donbas.
The Russian state news agency Tass reported that 31 people had died since Ukraine’s attack on Russia began Aug. 6, figures which are impossible to verify. It said 143 people had suffered injuries, of whom 79 were hospitalized, including four children.
A Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive device on a car in the Bolshesoldatsky area of Kursk region, slightly northeast of the town of Sudzha, the acting governor Alexei Smirnov said. One woman was killed on the spot and two others were hospitalized, he said.
Russia’s Central Electoral Commission announced that local elections in six districts and one city of the Kursk region scheduled for Sept. 8 will be postponed and rescheduled when voters' safety can be guaranteed.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Ukraine’s attack on Kursk has ended “any possibility” of peace negotiations.
“Who will negotiate with them after this, after the atrocities, the terror that they are committing against peaceful residents, the civilian population, civilian infrastructure and peaceful facilities,” she said at a briefing Wednesday in Moscow.
Ukraine said it was respecting the Geneva Conventions, the international humanitarian rules of war.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Kyiv established an office in the Kursk region to provide humanitarian and medical aid to the local population. More than 90% of the Russian civilians who stayed in territories of the Kursk region currently controlled by Ukraine are aged 60 and older, he said.
“We have no right to leave them there to die," Klymenko said, according to the Ukrinform national news agency.
Ukraine’s attacks on three bridges over the Seym River in Kursk could potentially trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border. Already they appear to be slowing down Russia’s response to the Kursk incursion.
Ukrainian forces appear to be striking Russian pontoon bridges and pontoon engineering equipment over the Seym in an area west of the Ukrainian advance point, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Tuesday.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed Wednesday by The Associated Press showed a significant fire on the Seym near the village of Krasnooktyabrskoe.
The blaze appeared on the northern bank of the river on Tuesday, with another fire seemingly in the village itself. Such fires are common after strikes and often signify where ongoing front-line combat is taking place.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had thwarted attack attempts by Ukrainian assault groups in the Kursk region, according to a report from Tass. Ukraine’s armed forces saw more than 45 soldiers killed or wounded over the past 24 hours while two were captured while attempting to attack the Kursk region, Tass said. There was no independent confirmation of those numbers and no comment from the Ukrainian side.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Army General Staff said it struck a Russian S-300 defense system Wednesday some 200 kilometers (125 miles) behind enemy lines in Novoshakhtinsk in the Rostov region. It said Russia had used the S-300 system for ground strikes at Ukrainian troops and peaceful cities, “destroying residential buildings and terrorizing the civilian population.”
Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.
Follow developments at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 24th Mechanised Brigade press service, servicemen of the 24th Mechanised Brigade fire a" Giatsint-S" 152mm self-propelled howitzer towards Russian positions near Chasiv Yar town, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Ukrainian 24th Mechanised Brigade via AP)
This satellite image released by Planet Labs PBC shows fires near the village of Krasnooktyabrskoe in Russia's Kursk region on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
A Fenix team rescue worker places a helmet on a girl during the evacuation of local population to safe areas, in Selidove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Tetiana, 11, lays on their possessions as she and her grandmother Tetiana, 61, wait for transfer to the train station during the evacuation of local people from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A Fenix team rescue worker places a helmet on Maryna Scherbyna as she and her children are evacuated as local people are moved from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a pontoon bridge across the Seim River between the town of Glushkovo and the village of Zvannoe in Russia's Kursk region on Aug. 17, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
Sofia Zhuravleva, 14, wears a helmet as she is evacuated with her mother Maryna Scherbyna and 9 year old brother Bohdan Scherbyna, as local people are moved from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Maryna Scherbyna, left, and her children, 9 year old Bohdan Scherbyna and 14 year old Angelina Scherbyna ride inside an armoured van belonging to the emergency service Fenix team to be evacuated as local people are moved from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, Russian soldiers fire Giatsint-B gun towards Ukrainian positions at an undisclosed location in Kherson region in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP)
Bohdan Scherbyna, 9, with his mother Maryna Scherbyna, 45, and sister Angelina Scherbyna, 14, left, arrive in an armoured van belonging to the emergency service Fenix team during the evacuation of local people from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Local residents clear broken glass from their balconies after a Russian bombardment of a residential neighbourhood in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a destroyed bridge across the Seim River at the town of Glushkovo in Russia's Kursk region on Aug. 17, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a pontoon bridge across the Seim River east of the town of Glushkovo in Russia's Kursk region on Aug. 17, 2024. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
A Fenix team rescue worker places a helmet on Bohdan Scherbyna, 9, as he is evacuated with his mother Maryna Scherbyna and 14 year old sister Angelina Scherbyna, as local people as moved from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
