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In a stark warning Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden's top budget official said time is running out for lawmakers to replenish U.S. aid for Ukraine, as the decision is bogged down in Congress over budget negotiations on immigration, where a deal has so far been out of reach.
Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said there is no avenue to help Ukraine aside from Congress approving more funding for Kyiv as it tries to repel Russia in a war that is now nearly two years old.
While the Pentagon has some limited authority to help Kyiv, without new funding from Capitol Hill, "that is not going to get big tranches of equipment into Ukraine," Young said Friday.
The U.S. sent a $250 million weapons package to Ukraine late last month, but without additional U.S. aid, Young said, Kyiv may have difficulty paying its civil servants and functioning amid Russia's barrage.
"I'm very concerned that it's not just the United States' resources that are necessary for Kyiv to stop Putin. It is: What message does that send to the rest of the world? And what will their decisions be if they see the United States not step up to the plate?" Young said to a group of journalists on Friday.
North Korean missiles
Russia hit Ukraine with short range ballistic missiles sourced from North Korea, senior Kyiv official Mykhailo Podolyak said Friday on the social media platform X, supporting an earlier such assertion by the White House.
"There is no longer any disguise. ... As part of its outright genocidal war, the Russian Federation for the first time struck at the territory of Ukraine with missiles received from ... North Korea," Podolyak wrote.
He did not provide evidence for the missiles being from North Korea, but the governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv said the region had been struck by missiles fired by Russia that were not Russian made.
In a statement Thursday, Washington cited declassified intelligence affirming Podolyak's claims.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called it a "significant and concerning escalation" relating to Pyongyang's support for Russia. He said the U.S. would raise the matter at the U.N. Security Council and impose additional sanctions on those collaborating to facilitate arms transfers.
Moscow has denied the accusations.
The U.S. has previously blamed Pyongyang for supplying Russia with weapons, although this is the first time U.S. intelligence has shared details about ballistic missiles - self-guided rockets that can reach targets 900 kilometers (560 miles) away.
A Reuters video operator filmed the aftermath of a Russian airstrike on January 2 on the regional capital of Kharkiv, where a missile landed close to the city center and left behind a deep crater and missile debris.
Joost Oliemans, a Dutch researcher and expert on North Korea's military, shared his footage with Reuters to review and said the missile remnants looked like they were from North Korea.
"It [the footage] appears to show the main body as well as the engine section of a missile that is pretty much a dead match for a North Korean type of missile that we've actually seen pretty clear photos of in the past few years," Oliemans said.
Russian drone attack
Ukraine said Friday it downed 21 of 29 Shahed drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack.
The drones were shot down across six regions on southern, central and western Ukraine, according to Ukraine's air force.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Ukraine's top priority is the delivery of additional air defense systems and missiles because many Ukrainian locations have been subjected to Russian shelling and missile and drone attacks.
Ukrainian drone strikes
Russia's air defenses downed dozens of Ukrainian drones in occupied Crimea and southern Russia on Friday, officials said.
Zelenskyy has pledged to hit more targets on the Crimean Peninsula and inside Russian border regions this year, alarming Russians as President Vladimir Putin seeks reelection in March.
Air raid sirens blared Friday in Sevastopol, Crimea's largest city. Traffic was interrupted for a second straight day on a bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally a decade ago, with Russia's southern Krasnodar region. The bridge is a key route for Russia's military supplies.
Static front line
Ground combat over the last week has maintained a static front line for Ukraine but has also included some loss, the British Defense Ministry said Friday in its daily intelligence report on Ukraine. In central Donetsk, the ministry said Avdiivka is "still heavily contested," but Russian forces in Marinka have finally advanced to the western edge of town "after nine years of combat in the area." Russian troops have been trying to take the town since seizing Crimea in 2014.
Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, the ministry said Russian airborne forces have "highly likely made minimal progress" in dislodging the Ukrainian Bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, near the village of Krynky.
Some material for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.