The Russian cargo ship was thought to be heading to Syria to transport military equipment out of the Tartus naval base.

Russia has held several rounds of tactical nuclear weapons drills this year, and regularly carries out military exercises for its strategic nuclear forces.

Zelensky warns of greater military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, including sending more troops and military equipment

Eugene Spector was already serving a sentence for a bribery conviction when he was charged with spying, for which a court ordered him to serve an additional 13 years.

Russia's friends — or frenemies — aren't all pariah states. Some of them enjoy good relations with the West, too.

Despite their elite status, North Korea's "Storm" troops were ill-prepared for the war, South Korea's National Intelligence Service said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday hosted Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

A Moscow court has on Tuesday sentenced a US citizen to 15 years in prison on espionage charges, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

Secretive North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but unlike in Russia, the Korean People's Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat. Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness,” says Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

North Korea and Russia are deepening their military cooperation, as Pyongyang ramps up the supply of arms to Moscow for its war in Ukraine and receives much needed cash and oil from the Kremlin in return.

"Through various sources of information and intelligence, we assess that North Korean troops who have recently engaged in combat with Ukrainian forces have suffered around 1,100 casualties," the JCS said in a statement.