The Russian invasion

New Swedish millions to Ukraine ahead of winter

Sweden, together with other Nordic and Baltic countries, has agreed on a new joint support package for Ukraine. Sweden's contribution amounts to SEK 320 million to the country's energy sector.

"The support is presented to meet Ukraine's urgent need to repair damaged energy systems and to replace destroyed energy production with new before winter," writes the Swedish Foreign Ministry in a press release.

- This support package is important to support the Ukrainian energy sector and help keep Ukrainian society going and Ukrainian homes warm, says Minister of Aid and Foreign Trade Benjamin Dousa in a statement.

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Trump: Zelensky would never have allowed the war to happen

Donald Trump suggests in a recent podcast that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is responsible for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the Washington Post reports.

In the interview with Patrick Bet-David, Trump repeated his earlier description of Zelenskyi as "the world's best salesman", and the false claim that the Ukrainian president goes home from every US visit with $100 billion. Then he continued:

- It doesn't mean that I don't want to help him, because I really feel for these people. But he would never have let that war begin. It is doomed to be lost.

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Fighting at the front or guarding the border - what should all North Koreans do?

It is not known if the thousands of North Koreans being trained in eastern Russia are intended to fight or if they are to support the Russian war against Ukraine in some other way, for example as trainers or advisers. That is what Korea expert Mats Engman tells SvD.

Engman states that North Korea's strength lies primarily in the large number of soldiers.

- They have plenty of equipment, not the world's most modern equipment but perhaps good enough to at least have a higher military capability than many of the untrained individuals that Russia picks off the street.

Military experts spoken to by the BBC question whether it is possible to integrate North Korean troops into the Russian army.

"It wasn't even very easy to bring in hundreds of Russian prisoners at first, and those guys spoke Russian," says an analyst who wants to remain anonymous because he is in Russia.

Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian newspaper Defense Express, does not believe that the units will be immediately deployed at the front. Rather, they can guard certain stretches of the border so that Russian soldiers can be released and moved. 

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The Russian invasion • Ukraine's response
Zelenskyi: Either NATO or Ukrainian nuclear weapons

In a conversation with Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine sees two ways forward: becoming a NATO member or building its own nuclear weapons. This is what the Ukrainian president says according to the Kyiv Post.

In a speech to the European Council in Brussels on Thursday, Zelenskyi brought up the Budapest Accords of 1994, when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the US, Britain - and Russia.

- Which nuclear weapon states suffered? None, except Ukraine. Who gave up their nuclear weapons? Ukraine. Who are fighting today? Ukraine, Zelensky said.

In the conversation with Trump - when it took place is unclear - Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would prefer to join NATO rather than become a nuclear weapon state again.