Russian overnight drone attack hit Ukraine ‘critical infrastructure,’ air force says
State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Anadolu via Getty Images
LONDON — Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 22 of 28 Russian drones in Moscow’s latest overnight barrage, though acknowledged “several hits on critical infrastructure facilities” in the west of the country.
The air force said it also shot down three Russian Kh-59/69 cruise missiles fired at the central city of Kryvyi Rih.
Only three drones were unaccounted from the latest wave, the air force wrote on Telegram, one having been lost in flight due to jamming and two having left Ukrainian airspace.
The force reported “several hits” on targets in the western Ternopil and Rivne regions.
Oleksandr Koval, the head of the Rivne military administration, said on Telegram that the Russian attack targeted “an energy infrastructure facility.”
“All appropriate services are working at the scene,” Koval said, adding there were no reported casualties.
In Ternopil, military administration head Vyacheslav Nehoda said a drone hit an industrial facility causing a fire. “The fire was localized” and put out, Nehoda wrote in a Facebook update.
There were no casualties, Nehoda added, but “there were again problems with electricity supply for some subscribers.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported the overnight downing of one Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region and one over the Belgorod region.
Russia’s long-range strike campaign appears set to continue through the winter in a bid to collapse Ukraine’s energy grid and exacerbate the war’s strain on the national economy.
President-elect Donald Trump’s November election victory has revived talk of peace negotiations after nearly three years of full-scale war. Both Moscow and Kyiv are maneuvering for leverage ahead of any potential negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hinted at the necessity for talks this week, telling Kyodo News that his nation must find “diplomatic solutions” to liberate territory occupied by Moscow since 2014, acknowledging that Kyiv’s “army lacks the strength to do that.”
But Zelenskyy suggested any talks — and any concessions — must be twinned with guaranteed protection from Western partners. An “invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is a necessary thing for our survival,” the president said following talks with European Union leaders in Kyiv on Sunday.
While diplomatic positioning continues, Zelenskyy is pushing allies to provide more weapons — particularly air defenses. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Kyiv on Monday, pledging another $680 million worth of arms for Ukraine.
The U.S. also announced a fresh tranche of military aid on Monday valued at $750 million. The State Department said the “urgently needed” weapons included Stinger air defense missiles, HIMARS ammunition, artillery ammunition and a variety of anti-tank weapons.
All 181 passengers and crew aboard a passenger jet that crashed upon landing in South Korea on Sunday morning are presumed dead except for two people rescued from the wreckage, authorities said.
Jeju Air Flight 2216 was landing at Muan International Airport around 9 a.m. local time when the plane went off the runway and crashed into a wall.
There were a total of 175 passengers and six crew members aboard the Boeing 737 aircraft, which had taken off from Bangkok, according to the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport. The official death toll, which has been provided by the National Fire Agency, has climbed steadily in the hours since the crash.
The transport ministry was on the scene investigating the cause of the crash, and details of what happened were beginning to come into focus. Prior to the plane’s crash landing, the control tower issued a warning of a possible bird strike, the ministry said. About a minute after that warning, a pilot sent a mayday distress signal, after which the tower issued permission for the aircraft to land, the ministry said.
According to the Air and Railway Investigation Committee, the aircraft’s “black boxes” were recovered from the wreckage. The plane’s flight data recorder (FDR) was found partially damaged and its cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was collected intact, officials said.
Decrypting the FDR data could take about a month, according to officials. However, if the damage to the FDR is severe, it may have to be sent to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for decoding, which could take more than six months, officials said.
Video from the scene at the time of the crash appears to show the landing gear was up when the plane touched down, possibly indicating some sort of malfunction, and it also appears the plane landed at a high speed. Videos taken at the scene showed flames and a thick column of dark smoke at the crash site.
As of 1 p.m. local time, authorities said the plane had completely burned. A temporary morgue was being set up at the airport.
By about 8 p.m., the official death toll had climbed to 176 people, the National Fire Agency said. Eighty-three of the dead were women and 82 were men, the agency said, adding that another 11 bodies remained unidentified. According to the flight manifest, there were five children under 10 years old on the flight, the youngest of them 3 years old.
A man and a woman were rescued from the wreckage and were taken to the hospital, according to the transport ministry. Both were crew members, the fire agency said. Their conditions were not released.
Initially, there were conflicting reports on the number of people rescued.
Jeju Air is a South Korean low-cost carrier that operates an all Boeing fleet, with 42 planes and nearly 3,000 staff.
“We deeply apologize to all those affected by the incident at Muan Airport,” Jeju Air said in a notice posted in English on its website. “We will make every effort to resolve the situation. We sincerely regret the distress caused.”
The website’s landing page replaced Jeju Air’s logotype, which is usually orange, with an all-black version.
The NTSB posted on X Sunday that it is “leading a team of U.S. investigators (NTSB, Boeing and FAA) to assist the Republic of Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB)” with their investigation of the crash, adding that the ARAIB would release any information about the investigation “per international protocols.”
Boeing was in contact with Jeju Air regarding the crash and was “standing ready to support them,” a Boeing spokesperson told ABC News earlier.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” the spokesperson said.
Muan, a city of roughly 90,000 people, is located in southwest South Korea.
ABC News’ Jessica Gorman, Victoria Beaule and Rashid Haddou contributed to this report.
Ukraine State Emergency Service/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
(LONDON and KYIV) — Russia on Thursday launched what officials in Kyiv said was an intercontinental ballistic missile toward southeastern Ukraine, but a U.S. official told ABC News that Russia launched “an experimental medium-range ballistic missile against Ukraine” near Dnipro.
The official said the United States briefed Ukraine and other close allies and partners in recent days on Russia’s possible use of this weapon in order to help them prepare. According to the official, Russia likely only possesses “a handful” of these experimental missiles.
Two U.S. officials previously told ABC News it was not an ICBM but instead an intermediate-range ballistic missile, or IRBM.
The launch raises the prospect of nuclear weapons; IRBMs or ICBMs can both be equipped with nuclear warheads. A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the ballistic missile Russia fired at Dnipro contained MIRVs, or multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, meaning it had multiple warheads that hit the target. MIRV technology is used in ICBMs to use multiple nuclear warheads atop the missile so they can strike multiple targets. The missile used Thursday did not carry nuclear warheads.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in remarks Thursday following the missile launch, said Russia has the right to use its weapons against the military facilities of countries employing their weapons against Russia.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military objects of those countries that allow to use their own weapons against our objects. In the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in a mirror manner,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia used “one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems” in an attack on Ukraine, adding that it was a “ballistic missile with a non-nuclear hypersonic equipment” and that the “test was successful.”
Russia warned the U.S. 30 minutes before the launch of its new “Oreshnik” missile against targets in Dnipro, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news outlet TASS.
The Kremlin announced earlier this week that Putin had updated the country’s nuclear doctrine, a move that lowered the bar for Russia to respond with nuclear weapons. Russian ICBMs are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although it appeared the missile fired on Thursday was not equipped with one.
Ukraine’s military was “95% sure” the strike on Thursday was with an ICBM, a Ukrainian official told ABC News, but added that they were still examining the missile parts on the ground and had not yet reached a final conclusion.
“Today it was a new Russian missile. All the parameters: speed, altitude — match those of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media. “All expert evaluations are underway.”
The Ukrainian Air Force announced Thursday morning it had tracked the launch of the ICBM, along with six additional missiles, all of which were targeting the Dnipro region. The ICBM appeared to have been launched from the Astrahan region, in Russia’s southwest, Ukrainian military officials said.
All of the missiles were launched in about two hours, beginning at about 5 a.m. local time, Ukraine said.
All were targeted at businesses and critical infrastructure, but only the missile that Ukraine identified as an ICBM struck the city, Ukraine said. The six other missiles were shot down. There were no reports of casualties or significant damage, officials said.
The U.S. officials said the assessment of the launch, the type of missile and warhead, and the damage in Dnipro was continuing. The distance from what Ukraine said was the launch point to the strike location in Dnipro is about 600 miles, a distance shorter than what an ICBM would be expected to travel.
Two experts told ABC News the projectile, seen in video circulating online, looks likely to be “a ballistic missile with MIRV-ed capabilities.”
The launch of an ICBM, if confirmed as such, would arrive amid concerns that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could further escalate. This week, Ukraine’s military for the first time launched U.S.-made ATACMS missiles toward targets within Russia, days after U.S. President Joe Biden allowed for such use of the long-range weapons.
Putin, in his remarks Thursday, blamed the U.S. for escalating the conflict, saying: “I would like to emphasize once again that it was not Russia, but the United States that destroyed the international security system. And by continuing to fight, cling to their hegemony, they are pushing the whole world into a global conflict.”
Kyiv on Tuesday launched six of the ATACMS at targets within Russian territory, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Zelenskyy said he would not confirm if Ukraine had used ATACMS to conduct a strike on an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of Russia, but said Ukraine has ATACMS and “will use all of these” against Russia.
Within hours of Russia announcing it had struck down five of the ATACMS on Tuesday, the Kremlin announced that Putin had updated the country’s nuclear doctrine.
Following that warning, Ukraine on Wednesday fired long-range British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia for the first time, a Ukrainian military unit involved in the operation told ABC News. At least 10 of those missiles hit an estate in the village of Marino, the unit said.
They were targeting a command post where North Korean army generals and officers were present, the unit said. More than 10,000 North Korean troops are said to be operating alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region.
Ukraine’s 413th Separate Unmanned Systems Battalion, which helped provide fire control for the strikes, told ABC News that there was intelligence showing high-ranking North Koreans were present.
Zelenskyy cast the Russian strike on Thursday as a result of Russia and its leader being “terrified.”
“Obviously, Putin is terrified when normal life simply exists next to him. When people simply have dignity. When a country simply wants to be and has the right to be independent,” Zelenskyy said. “Putin is doing whatever it takes to prevent his neighbor from breaking free of his grasp.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Lauren Minore, Yulia Drozd, Natasha Popova, Tanya Stukalova and Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. officials suspect that a recently discovered Chinese hacking and espionage campaign scooped up data on hundreds of thousands of American mobile phone users, likely stealing information about more than 1 million customers, ABC News has learned.
Sources familiar with the investigation gave ABC News a detailed sense of the vast scope of what U.S. officials are calling a major intelligence gathering operation by China, exploiting weaknesses in the communications networks of the nation’s top telecommunications companies.
In a briefing on Tuesday, FBI and Homeland Security’s cyber officials said that the Chinese were able to steal a “large amount of data” — officially acknowledging for the first time that China was able to determine who thousands of mobile phone users were talking to, when they spoke and where they were communicating from.
China initially appeared to have focused on a huge swath of mobile phone users in the national capital region. The people who briefed ABC News declined to provide numbers, but ABC News was able get more detailed information through a number of interviews.
The Chinese hackers were then able to narrow their focus and zero in on the specific communications of a smaller number of important, high profile Americans and, in some cases, China was able to obtain audio calls from that smaller group of victims and review their text messages.
ABC News has learned that among those targeted were some top government officials in the Biden administration, with sources telling ABC News this includes at least one cabinet secretary and a top White House Homeland Security Adviser.
Although it is not clear how deep the spying went on specific targets, sources tell ABC News that a number of those high ranking government officials and high profile Americans have been informed that they were potential victims.
ABC News has previously reported that President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, some staff of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of Trump’s defense attorneys, Todd Blanche, and leaders in both political campaigns were targeted.
Officials in the Tuesday briefing admitted they cannot say with certainty that China hackers have been fully kicked out of these telecommunications networks and acknowledged they are still trying to understand the scope of this activity.
Multiple sources have warned that the scope and scale of the operation continues to widen, with one official telling ABC News that this is not over.
The investigation has revealed that China’s campaign exploited U.S. computer routers serving telecom corporations, giving them the gateway to the phone numbers of significant numbers of customers of Verizon, AT&T, Lumen Technologies and other telecommunications companies.
ABC News previously reported that the operation had gone undetected for many months, and was perhaps carried on for more than a year.
A recent statement by FBI and Homeland Security officials also revealed that China also got access to some data about some sensitive warrants the Department of Justice has been pursuing, with sources telling ABC News that there is a fear of China using the data to figure out some of the people who federal authorities are investigating and, in some cases, monitoring.
Much of the Tuesday briefing centered on how Chinese hackers compromised the system by exploiting existing basic gaps in security and confirmed that federal authorities have given industry leaders a list of remedies to detect and prevent ongoing attacks as well as recommendations on how to root the hackers out.
