Russia-Ukraine war live: Dozens killed in Donetsk as photos emerge of ‘North Korean shipments to Russia’

President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukrainians abroad on Monday for their support during Russia‘s invasion, and proposed changing the constitution to allow dual citizenship.

Ukraine‘s constitution does not give Ukrainian citizens the right to dual citizenship, so millions of people of Ukrainian origin who live abroad are unable to hold Ukrainian passports.

In what appeared a symbolic gesture on Ukraine‘s Unity Day, marking the anniversary of the unification of eastern and western Ukraine in 1919, Zelenskiy said he was submitting draft legislation to parliament that would allow dual citizenship.

“Today I am submitting to the Verkhovna Rada a key draft law that will allow the adoption of comprehensive legislative amendments and the introduction of multiple citizenship,” Zelensky said in a statement.

“And it will allow all ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants from around the world to have our citizenship. Of course, except for citizens of the aggressor country.”

The UK has given UN experts satellite images of North Korean cargo shipments to Russia.

The pictures were sent in an attempt to trigger a full investigation into Russia and North Korea’s breaking of international sanctions.

North Korea has allegedly supplied the Kremlin with ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells following Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia last year.

An unpublished UK defence intelligence report seen by The Guardian shows images of three Russian ships loading cargo at North Korea’s Najin port, taken between September and December.

They will now be examined by a UN panel of experts, with a report expected next month.

A UN diplomat said: “Russia’s use of North Korean weapons in Ukraine is a violation of multiple UN security council resolutions.

“It undermines international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and exposes just how desperate Russia has become in its failed invasion.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Ukraine’s capital Monday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on how Poland can keep supporting the country’s almost two-year war with Russia and resolve a dispute between the neighboring nations over grain shipments and trucking.

Tusk, who returned to power in Poland last month and is keen to show that a change in government won’t bring a change in Ukraine policy, was also due to meet with Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal.

“There are some conflicts of interest, we know it well and we will talk about them, but not only in the spirit of friendship, which is obvious, but with the attitude to solve these problems as soon as possible, not to maintain or multiply them,” Tusk said, according to comments posted on X, formerly Twitter, by his office.

The Kremlin accused Ukraine on Monday of using indiscriminate weapons and attacking civilian infrastructure after 27 people were killed in the shelling of a market in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Sunday.

“The Kyiv regime continues showing its vicious side..,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Not long after the 1924 death of the founder of the Soviet Union, a popular poet soothed and thrilled the grieving country with these words: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.”

A century later, the once-omnipresent image of Vladimir Lenin is largely an afterthought in modern Russia, despite those famous lines by revolutionary writer Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The Red Square mausoleum where his embalmed corpse lies in an open sarcophagus is no longer a near-mandatory pilgrimage but a site of macabre kitsch, open only 15 hours a week. It draws far fewer visitors than the Moscow Zoo.

The Kremlin has had no contact with United States presidential candidate Donald Trump on settling the conflict in Ukraine, it said on Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leadership had no idea about how Trump planned to resolve the issue in the event of his victory.

Russia‘s military and other government agencies are taking the necessary measures, including when it comes to air defences, after a suspected Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian fuel export terminal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Russia‘s Novatek said on Sunday it had been forced to suspend some operations at the terminal and “technological process” at an adjacent complex due to a fire which Ukrainian media said was the result of a drone attack.

Poland’s new prime minister Donald Tusk arrived in neighbouring Ukraine on Monday to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky, his office said, aiming to further strengthen relations as the war with Russia nears the two-year mark.

Tusk’s government is exploring how to make more ammunition and military equipment as part of a new aid package for Ukraine, foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said last week.

Warsaw has emerged as a key ally for Kyiv as it defends itself against Russia and seeks more financial and military support from Western partners. Poland has also taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees.

But relations between the two had also deteriorated in recent months amid blockades by Polish truckers at the border, which threatened to dent Ukraine‘s GDP.

They agreed last week to suspend their protests, which had been aimed at revoking Ukrainian truckers’ permit-free access to the European Union, until March 1.

A video released by Tusk’s office showed the newly installed leader, who assumed office last month, arriving at Kyiv’s main train station in his first trip to Ukraine as prime minister.

Russian troops are reportedly being “beaten and abused” while being forced to purchase their own uniform and sleep in unheated tents at a training ground in Volgograd Oblast.

War-monitoring think tank The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that military personnel told Mobilization News that they have to sleep in unheated tents and purchase their own uniforms and equipment and that no one is training them.

The Russian opposition outlet also reported that ‘unspecified people’, likely Russian commanders, were beating and abusing troops and that personnel “only rehearse formations before the arrival of high-ranking officers”.

Ukraine’s military said they had downed eight Russian drones overnight on Monday morning, AFP reports.

“The enemy attacked with eight attack UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) of the Shahed-136/131 type from the Primorsko-Akhtarsk region of the Russian Federation,” the air force said in a statement.

It added that the drones had been downed by defence systems in several southern and central regions of Ukraine.

There were no immediate reports of damage caused by falling debris.