Kuleba reacted sharply to South Korea's position
Russia is relying on ballistic missiles and is trying to intensify its attacks on Ukraine as much as possible. According to former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, the Kremlin wants to simultaneously weaken Ukraine’s defense industry and break the people’s will to resist. The diplomat also reacted sharply to South Korea’s position, as it refuses to supply weapons to Ukraine.
Dmytro Kuleba believes that Russia has taken advantage of the fact that Ukraine cannot quickly build up its capabilities to defend against ballistic missiles. According to him, the Kremlin has decided to rely on the sheer volume of such munitions and to continuously attack Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
According to the diplomat, Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russia is diverting a significant portion of its resources to the production of ballistic missiles. North Korea has also joined this effort. “We are hearing reports from Ukrainian intelligence that Russia is directing its main resources toward the production of ballistic missiles at the expense of other types of weapons, and the North Koreans have joined this effort,” Kuleba said.
He also stated that North Korea may have delivered a significant number of missiles to Russia. At the same time, Kuleba emphasized that he was not ready to cite a specific figure, as he had not seen relevant information in open sources.
Separately, the former foreign minister mentioned South Korea, which has so far refused to supply weapons to Ukraine. “As far as I know, the North Koreans brought a lot of missiles with them. I haven’t seen this reported publicly in the news yet, so I can’t give a specific number, but there are a lot of them. Meanwhile, by the way, South Korea is still ‘playing it cool’ and saying they won’t help us with weapons. Well, the Korean God will be their judge,” Kuleba said.
What is the goal of the Russian strikes?
According to the diplomat, Russia has no intention of stopping the missile attacks. At the same time, he noted that even large-scale strikes are not capable of completely destroying a major Ukrainian city or rendering it uninhabitable. Kuleba compared this to Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Despite the strikes, critical infrastructure continues to function, and people are adapting to difficult conditions. “We have electricity, we have Wi-Fi; we can record videos and communicate with you. The situation with the city is roughly the same. For the civilian population, this is terror, but it is simply physically impossible to destroy an entire city or render it completely uninhabitable,” the diplomat said.
Kuleba believes that Russia’s strategy regarding ballistic missiles has two objectives. The first is to weaken Ukraine’s ability to produce its own weapons as much as possible, especially long-range systems that the Ukrainian military can use to strike Russian territory and military targets.
The second is to undermine the morale of Ukrainians. According to Kuleba, Russia wants to wear people down with constant attacks so that they begin to think it’s better to agree to any terms just to make the shelling stop.
Russia Has Intensified Its Ballistic Missile Strikes
Recent large-scale attacks show that ballistic missiles remain one of the main tools of Russian strikes against Ukraine. On the night of August 5, Russia carried out another massive combined strike. According to reports, Russian forces launched 24 Iskander and S-400 ballistic missiles, as well as four Onyx missiles.
The Air Force reported that none of these missiles were intercepted. According to military authorities, 17 people were killed as a result of the attack. Storage facilities and logistics sites were also damaged or destroyed. Against this backdrop, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy convened a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council. Among other things, participants discussed the country’s preparations for the winter of 2026–2027 and the strengthening of its defenses.
Zelenskyy stated that the Ukrainian military will work not only on intercepting Russian missiles but also on destroying the launchers from which they are fired. In this way, Ukraine is attempting to counter Russian tactics on several levels simultaneously—developing its own long-range capabilities, strengthening its missile defense, and destroying Russian assets used for strikes. Kuleba discussed this on his YouTube channel.
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