Image source, Korean Central News Agency

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says "never before" has the threat of a nuclear war been greater, blaming the US for its "aggressive and hostile" policy towards Pyongyang.

"Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war," he said at a military exhibition yesterday, according to state media KCNA.

He said North Korea has "already gone as far as we can" in its talks with the US, accusing it of having a "thorough stance of power and aggressive and hostile policy towards us that can never change".

Kim's comments come amid growing concern over deepening ties between Russia and North Korea, and as we reported earlier, Russia is estimated to have supplied North Korea with more than a million barrels of oil this year in exchange for weapons and troops Pyongyang has sent Moscow to fuel its war in Ukraine.

Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring

Image source, Suspilne Sumy

Russia has used a drone equipped with shrapnel munitions against a building in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy, local authorities say.

This is the first reported use of such a weapon in the war.

Shrapnel munitions work by releasing large numbers of fast-travelling metal pellets designed to kill enemy soldiers. These weapons have been criticised because of their indiscriminate nature which can pose a threat to civilians.

"This is done to kill as many people as possible. This is pure genocide," the head of the regional administration, Volodymyr Artyukh, said.

According to him, two people have been killed in the attack and 13 injured.

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, reporting from Dnipro, Ukraine

Image source, Reuters

Rarely in this war has the use of a single weapon generated such widespread anxiety and debate.

The deafening explosions that shook Dnipro in the early hours of yesterday morning continue to reverberate.

With Moscow still threatening further responses to what it calls the reckless decision of Britain and America to let Ukraine fire their missiles into Russia, the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, says the war is entering a decisive phase. The threat of a global conflict, he said this morning, is serious and real.

Meeting his Ukrainian counterpart in Stockholm, Sweden’s Defence Minister, Pål Jonson, said efforts to discourage the West from supporting Ukraine would not work.

While in China, which supports Russia’s war effort, a foreign ministry spokesman called on all parties to stay calm and exercise restraint.

Fearing further, similar attacks, Ukraine is on edge. A session of parliament in Kyiv was cancelled today, amid fears of an attack on the city’s government district.

Image source, Reuters

Nato secretary general and former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte is expected to meet with US president-elect Donald Trump to discuss Ukraine, according to reports from Dutch and US media.

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that Rutte has flown to Florida and will visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach.

Ukrainian news agency Interfax also reports the possible meeting, citing sources from the Washington Post, saying the pair are expected to discuss how to achieve long-term peace between Moscow and Kyiv.

The development comes as Nato and Ukraine have scheduled emergency talks on Tuesday in Brussels after Russia used a new type of ballistic missile in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro yesterday.

Russia claims to have captured a village near the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove, where Moscow's armed forces have been closing in, after months of advances.

The Russian defence ministry said it had "liberated" the frontline village of Novodmytrivka, which is about 10 kilometres (6 miles) north of Kurakhove and near to the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region.

The Global Story has just published its latest podcast, which has taken a look at a week of escalations in Ukraine, and what it means for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s commitment to reach a peace deal next year.

The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, tells presenter Lucy Hockings that while Ukraine has so far been determined not to cede any territory to Russia in a peace deal, people there are growing frustrated as the war drags on.

Listen on BBC Sounds, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring

Ukrainian military intelligence service HUR suggests the ballistic missile used by Russia against Dnipro yesterday may have been intercontinental and was likely a Kedr (“Cedar”) missile – which official Russian news agency TASS in 2021 said was a new intercontinental ballistic missile which Russia was planning to start developing in 2023-2024 to replace the Yars ICBM.

It took the missile 15 minutes to reach Dnipro after being launched from the Astrakhan region, according to HUR.

HUR also says the missile had six warheads each equipped with six submunitions.

On approach to the target, the missile was travelling at the speed of Mach 11, or 13,583 km/h (8,440mph).

If you're just joining us, or are in need of a recap, here's the latest:

• Reactions have been coming in to Russia hitting Ukraine with a new intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday
• The Kremlin said the strike was in response to Ukraine's use of American and British long-range weapons, and was a warning that Washington had understood
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the strike as a “clear and severe escalation” and said the “world must respond”
• The UK and France have said they will do "everything that is necessary" to support Ukraine and achieve lasting peace
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Russia's use of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in Ukraine is a "dangerous escalation"
• China has called for all parties to "remain calm and exercise restraint"

• Nato and Ukraine will hold emergency talks in Brussels next week

Stay with us as we bring you the latest updates.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to scare Western allies with escalation, former US Ambassador to Nato, Ivo Daalder, tells the BBC's Newsday programme.

“It’s something he’s been doing for quite a while. He’s constantly trying to find new ways to scare the West into not taking the actions they need to take in order to defend Ukraine, hoping to deter in some ways Western countries from continuing to support Ukraine," Daalder says.

He says now Putin is trying to scare Ukrainians, Europeans and Americans by emphasising the conflict is not just fought in Ukraine but has the potential of spreading well beyond Ukraine.

“These threats should be taken seriously," Daalder says, "at the same time we shouldn’t be cowed by those threats or changes in doctrine... We should remember that Vladimir Putin is doing that from weakness, not because of strength."

Daalder deplores the fact that the US decision to allow Ukraine to use longer-range missile into Russia came so late. He adds that US President-elect Donald Trump could also revoke that decision, along with a number of other actions that could make life for Ukrainians "much, much worse".

The Kremlin says that a strike on Ukraine using a newly-developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed to warn the West that Moscow will respond to their "reckless" decisions and actions in support of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had fired the new missile, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, at a Ukrainian military facility and there was "no doubt" that Washington had understood the warning from Putin.

"The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side."

Peskov also said that Russia had not been obliged to warn the US about the strike, but had informed them 30 minutes before the launch anyway.

President Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov added.

Image source, Getty Images

The UK and France will do "everything that is necessary" to support Ukraine and achieve lasting peace, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said in a newspaper piece co-written with his French counterpart, Jean-Noel Barrot, external.

It comes in response to Putin's allegation the UK and US have escalated the war by allowing Ukraine to use their missiles to strike inside Russia.

Instead, the pair say it was Russia's "unprovoked full-scale war" that escalated the "largest war on the European continent since the Second World War".

They also hold Putin responsible for the "annihilation of the global architecture that has been the cornerstone of international peace and security for generations".

Ukraine's parliament has cancelled Friday's session, citing the risk of a Russian missile attack on the district of Kyiv where government buildings are located.

"The hour of questions to the government has been cancelled," an MP from the ruling party told AFP.

"There are signals of an increased risk of attacks on the government district in the coming days", Yevgenia Kravchuk said.

Russia's use of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in Ukraine is a "dangerous escalation", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says.

The latest escalation shows "how dangerous this war is" Scholz says, according to German newspaper Die Zeit.

Speaking at a political event on Friday morning, the chancellor also says Germany is a staunch supporter of Ukraine, but adds Germany won't send them Taurus cruise missiles and that a confrontation between Nato and Russia had to be be avoided.

Russia's defence minister Andrei Belousov says its forces have "derailed" Ukraine's military plans for the rest of the year.

His comments come after Russia launched a new type of ballistic missile on Ukrainian targets yesterday.

Belousov made the remarks during a visit to a "north fighting group", saying Russian troops had "accelerated" its advances into Ukraine and "ground down" Ukraine's best units.

For months, Russia's efforts have been firmly focused on eastern Ukraine, where much of the fighting has focused on since Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

This part of Ukraine has been contested territory since 2014 when Russian-backed fighters seized large swathes of the eastern Donestsk and Luhansk regions.

You can see how much territory Russia has taken in the map below.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

Steve Rosenberg
BBC Russia editor

In September Putin announced he was lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons - the decree was published this week. A clear warning to Europe and America not to allow longer-range missile strikes on Russian territory.

Now this red line, too, has been crossed.

Earlier this week, when pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets asked a retired lieutenant-general how Russia should respond to an Atacms attack on Bryansk region, he replied:

“Starting World War Three over strikes on an arms depot in Bryansk region would probably be short-sighted.”

It would be comforting to think that the Kremlin shares that view.

But Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation contained no evidence of that.

His message to Ukraine’s supporters in the West appeared to be: this is a red line I’m serious about, I dare you to cross it.

For more on what President Putin might do next, read our Russia editor's analysis.

Russia's use of a new type of ballistic missile on Ukraine yesterday will "neither change the course of the conflict or deter" Nato's support for Kyiv, according to the military alliance's spokesperson.

Farah Dakhlallah says Russia is trying "terrorise" civilians and intimidate Ukraine's allies by using the intermediate-range ballistic missile.

"Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter Nato allies from supporting Ukraine,” she said.

China has called for all parties to "remain calm and exercise restraint" in the Ukraine war, after Russia used a new type of ballistic missile and Ukraine fired longer-range Western missiles into Russian territory.

China's foreign ministry spokesman said they should "work to de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultations" to help create the right conditions for a ceasefire.

"China's position on the Ukraine issue has been consistent and clear, advocating for resolving the crisis through political means and avoiding an escalation of the situation," Lin Jian said.

Nato and Ukraine will hold emergency talks in Brussels next week, prompted by Russia's attack on Ukraine with a new type of ballistic missile yesterday.

The meeting of the Nato-Ukraine Council will take place on Tuesday and comes after a request from Kyiv, according to officials who spoke to news agency AFP.

The council, formed in July 2023, is a joint body between Nato members and Ukraine - which is keen to join the military alliance - and also acts as a "crisis consultation mechanism".

Chris Partridge
BBC News, Weapons Analyst

President Vladimir Putin has described Russia's new experimental ballistic missile as capable of Mach 10 - ten times the speed of sound, up to 3km per second.

It's on the upper edge of the definition of hypersonic, and few things can achieve this.

Speed is important because the faster a missile travels, the quicker it gets to target. And the quicker it gets to target, the less time a defending military has to react (after all, Speed = Distance / Time).

A ballistic missile generally gets to target by following an arcing path up into the atmosphere and a similar one down towards its destination.

But as it descends, it picks up speed, it has more kinetic energy and more kinetic energy gives it more options. This allows it to manoeuvre down towards the target - by performing some kind of defending wriggle - that makes interception by surface-to-air missile systems (such as Patriot) particularly difficult.

This isn't new for militaries that have to defend against such threats of course, but the greater the speed, the harder it becomes.

That's why President Putin has likely placed emphasis on its speed in announcing this new type of missile.

US officials told the BBC today that it was already aware of this new experimental system and had briefed Ukraine and its partners about its possible use to help them prepare.

Nearly 12,000 missiles have been launched against Ukraine by Russia since this full-scale conflict started. An extraordinary number.

Some 80% of those have been intercepted by Ukraine. Equally extraordinary. But these faster speeds of ballistic missiles is intended to try to bring that percentage down.

Steve Rosenberg
BBC Russia editor

This week the Kremlin accused the “collective West” of escalating the war in Ukraine.

But nearly three years of war in Ukraine have shown that it is Vladimir Putin who embraces escalation as a means to achieving his goals - in this case, control over Ukraine or at the very least peace on Russia’s terms.

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his decision to declare four Ukrainian territories part of Russia, his deployment of North Korean troops to Kursk region, his decision on Thursday to target the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, followed up by threats to strike the West - all of these represent moments of escalation in this conflict.

I once described Vladimir Putin as a car with no reverse gear and no brakes, careering down the highway, accelerator pedal stuck to the floor.

From what I can see, little has changed.

Don’t expect the Putinmobile to suddenly decelerate or de-escalate now in the face of longer-range missile strikes on Russia.

But he also knows the world could soon be a very different place with Donald Trump soon to be in the White House.

President-elect Trump has expressed scepticism regarding US military assistance for Ukraine and has been fiercely critical of Nato - music to Putin’s ears.

Which means that, despite the latest threats and warnings, the Kremlin may decide against a major escalation right now.

You can read more of Steve Rosenberg's thoughts on what steps Putin could take next.