North Korea has ratified a landmark mutual defence pact with Russia, state media reported on Tuesday, weeks after sending thousands of troops to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine and sealing a deepening security cooperation between the two nations. The deal “was ratified as a decree” of Kim Jong-un, the Korean Central news agency (KCNA) said. The notice comes after Russian lawmakers voted unanimously last week to ratify the deal, which President Vladimir Putin later signed. Ukraine said on Monday its hard-pressed military was battling 50,000 troops in Russia’s Kursk region to its north, while also scrambling to reinforce two besieged fronts in the east and bracing to meet an infantry assault in the south. The escalating fighting along a more than 1,000km (620 miles) of frontline is stretching Ukraine’s already outnumbered troops at a critical moment after Donald Trump won the US election. Ukraine’s armed forces commander Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said he had travelled to the front in Russia’s Kursk region. “[Russian forces] are trying to dislodge our troops and advance deep into the territory we control,” he said on Telegram. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would strengthen positions on the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove fronts where Moscow has directed its offensive pressure for months. Russia has been closing in on Pokrovsk, a strategic road and rail hub that has a coalmine. The small industrial town of Kurakhove is home to a major coal-powered thermal power plant. A Ukrainian military spokesperson told Reuters that Russia was also moving trained assault groups to forward positions in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and that they were preparing to attack. The southern front has seen far less fighting since 2023 when Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive that failed to break through heavily defended and mined lands held by Russia. “[The assaults] could begin in the near future, we’re not even talking about weeks, we’re expecting it to happen any day,” said Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for the southern military sector. Although it was not clear if they would involve a single offensive push or separate assaults, intelligence assessed that Moscow’s troops planned to use armoured vehicles and a considerable number of drones, Voloshyn said. “They are preparing both armoured groups and light vehicles – buggies, motorcycles – to conduct these assault operations,” he added. The Kremlin has denied reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, spoke to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, last week calling the media reports “pure fiction”. The Washington Post first reported that a call had taken place, citing unidentified sources, and said Trump had told Putin he should not escalate the Ukraine war. “It is completely untrue. It is pure fiction; it is simply false information,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said when asked about the call. “There was no conversation.” Russian human rights group Memorial told AFP that Moscow’s crackdown on dissent since invading Ukraine is vastly underestimated, with thousands of Russian and Ukrainians jailed for political reasons. Sergei Davidis, the head of Memorial’s department for supporting political prisoners, said there were about 7,000 Ukrainian civilians detained by Russian authorities, repeating a count by the Ukrainian NGO Centre for Civil Liberties. Davidis said Memorial also discovered several hundred Russians being held for “high treason” or “sabotage” cases since the Ukraine invasion, and “thousands” of criminal cases for refusing to fight in Ukraine. There are also dozens of Ukrainian soldiers held in Russia who are facing prosecution instead of being treated as prisoners of war. Russian strikes on Monday damaged a dam near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian authorities said, warning nearby villages could be threatened by rising water levels. “The Russians damaged the dam of the reservoir of Kurakhove. This strike potentially threatens residents of settlements on the Vovcha River, both in Donetsk and Dnipro regions,” the region’s Governor Vadym Filashkin said. Russian attacks on Monday killed two in Ukraine’s central-east Dnipropetrovsk region and injured at least 19, with more people likely trapped under the rubble, officials said. Shelling by artillery killed two people in Nikopol and injured five more, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messenger platform. A medical facility, a cafe and shops were damaged, he added.