Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had held a new discussion with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on the latter’s proposal to deploy troops in Ukraine as a means to help achieve a stable peace. “We share a common vision: reliable guarantees are essential for a peace that can truly be achieved,” said Ukraine’s president, who was in Brussels on Wednesday for meetings with Nato’s chief and European leaders. “We continued working on President Macron’s initiative regarding the presence of forces in Ukraine that could contribute to stabilising the path to peace.” Macron’s office said France was making reinforced support for Ukraine its “absolute priority” and would continue giving Ukraine “the means to defend itself and to make Russia’s war of aggression fail”. Macron would maintain a “tight dialogue with Ukraine and its international partners to work for a return to a fair and lasting peace”. Zelenskyy is also due to take part in an EU summit in the Belgian capital on Thursday.

Asked how Britain would respond if Zelenskyy asked for British troops to be sent to Ukraine, the UK foreign minister, David Lammy, told Sky News he saw no sign Russia’s president was ready to negotiate. “The discussion is about equipping Ukraine for the days ahead. That is why we meet at this very sombre moment to ensure that Ukraine gets through the winter and gets into 2025. I know there’s lots of speculation, but the truth is Putin is not a man that you can negotiate with when he is causing such mayhem on European soil at this moment in time.”

At least 100 North Koreans deployed to support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine have been killed since entering combat in December, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun told reporters on Thursday. Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to reinforce the Russian military, including to the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces seized territory earlier this year. “In December, they [North Korean troops] engaged in actual combat, during which at least 100 fatalities occurred,” Lee said, speaking after a briefing by South Korea’s spy agency. “The National Intelligence Service also reported that the number of injured is expected to reach nearly 1,000.”

Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, expressed frustration that European leaders were playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin by talking publicly about when peace talks might start and whether European peacekeepers would be involved. The focus, Rutte said, must be “to do everything now to make sure that when it comes to air defence, when it comes to other weapons systems, that we make sure that we provide whatever we can … I think we would be very wise to put some lid on this [pre-empting a peace process] and focus on the business at hand, and the business at hand is to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning.”

Russia’s investigative committee said it had detained an Uzbek citizen who investigators blamed for placing the bomb that killed Lt Gen Igor Kirillov. The Kremlin-controlled news agency Tass reported claims by the Russian domestic spy agency, the FSB, that the 29-year-old had been recruited by Ukrainian special services and promised $100,000 and travel to the EU. The man was arrested in the village of Chernoye in the Balashikha district of Moscow, the state-controlled news agency Ria reported, citing the interior ministry. The Russian foreign ministry said it would raise the assassination of Kirillov at the UN security council on Friday.

Britain on Thursday unveiled £225m (US$286m) in new military aid to Ukraine for next year including drones, boats and air defence systems. The UK’s defence secretary, John Healey, visited Kyiv on Wednesday for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov.

North Korea demonstrated this year that it could produce ballistic missiles and supply them to Russia for use against Ukraine in a matter of months, the head of a research organisation that traces weapons used in the war said on Wednesday. Jonah Leff told the UN security council that researchers on the ground examined remnants of four missiles from North Korea recovered in Ukraine in July and August, including one that had marks indicating it was produced in 2024. “This is the first public evidence of missiles having been produced in North Korea and then used in Ukraine within a matter of months, not years,” he said.

The World Bank approved $2.05bn in funding for Ukraine that includes the first grant from a $20bn US loan fund for Kyiv that is backed by income from frozen Russian sovereign assets. The package also includes World Bank financing of $1.05bn enhanced with loan guarantees from a trust fund supported by Japan and Britain, the bank said. About $50bn in financing for Ukraine is being raised from Russian assets frozen overseas.

Keir Starmer’s office said he used a call with Donald Trump to restate that international allies must stand together in support of Ukraine. “The prime minister reiterated the need for allies to stand together with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and to ensure Ukraine is in the strongest possible position.”

Ukraine has dismissed a Russian allegation that its drones repeatedly dropped white phosphorus in September as “false and nonsensical”, saying that Kyiv was fully compliant with its international arms control obligations. “We are confident that by making such false accusations, Moscow seeks to shift blame for its own actions and deceive foreign audiences,” foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told Reuters.

The US issued fresh sanctions on Wednesday on several Russia-based entities over their involvement in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, the state department said. They included Russia-based marine services and water transport entities, the state-owned maritime rescue service and more than a dozen vessels, as well as Nord Stream 2 AG, the operator of the project, and a Russia-based insurer of companies involved in the project.

Ukraine struck Russian territory with at least 13 missiles and 84 drones, triggering a fire at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in the southern Rostov region that burned for hours, Russian officials said on Thursday. Russian air defences shot down 84 drones over Russian regions, including 36 over Rostov region, according to the defence ministry.

The Ukrainian air force said on Wednesday that Russia launched 81 drones to attack Ukraine overnight of which 30 “imitator drones” did not reach their targets and 51 were shot down.