Ed Miliband is facing his first key test on Labour’s ambitions for global climate leadership, with a crucial decision looming on how far and how fast to cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The energy secretary is preparing a new international pledge for the UK to cut carbon sharply in the next decade, but could face opposition within the cabinet.

Experts and campaigners told the Guardian the UK should make substantial cuts to carbon in the next 10 years, compared with its existing pledge. Lord Stern, the economist, said the new target should be a cut of at least 78% in carbon emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2035.

That is a 10 percentage point increase on the existing pledge, under the Paris climate agreement, to cut emissions by 68% by 2030 – a pledge made by Boris Johnson in 2021 but which the UK is well off track in meeting.

Stern said: “A strong transition [to a low-carbon economy] and the investment and innovation which drives it is crucial to our own growth. If we commit and deliver, as we can, we will establish a much more attractive growth story than the dirty destructive models of the past. And we can show the way internationally.”

Mike Hemsley, the deputy director of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, agreed that 78% should be the key figure. “This is a reasonable number. We have seen an acceleration [of the move to clean energy] in the power sector, but there has not been much progress on buildings, which is needed,” he said.

Friends of the Earth also agreed that a pledge of 78% cuts would be on target. Mike Childs, head of policy, said: “We’d argue that the urgent need to prevent climate breakdown spiralling out of control requires the deepest cuts possible. This must focus on cleaning up our act at home, because a significant proportion of our cuts to date have come from outsourcing manufacturing abroad rather than reducing emissions across sectors in the UK. But it must be matched with investment in a fair, green transition that protects jobs and communities.”

The question of what the pledge should be must be decided urgently. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, promised at the UN general assembly last month to present the UK’s next emissions-cutting pledge at the forthcoming UN climate summit, Cop29, in Azerbaijan from 11 November.

That is significantly in advance of the February deadline for submitting such plans – known as NDCs (nationally determined contributions) – to the UN, showing the UK’s determination to take a lead on the issue.

Before the autumn budget at the end of this month, the Climate Change Committee – the independent advisers to the government – will present their deliberations on what the headline emissions pledge should be. After that, Miliband and his advisers will have just over a fortnight to prepare at least a draft of the NDC, for presentation to other governments at Cop29.

Miliband does not have to take the CCC’s advice. The Guardian has learned that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is working on its own headline number on emissions cuts, independently of the CCC’s deliberations.

The question of whether to push for tougher targets, or to hold back on the grounds that other countries should do more, is likely to be a key tussle within the Labour cabinet.

Miliband is pushing for greater ambition, and has the support of the foreign secretary, David Lammy, who views the climate crisis as a threat to national security and believes the UK must take a leading role in tackling it.

Starmer has also staked his personal reputation among world leaders on the issue. At the UN last month, he told other heads of state: “We are returning the UK to responsible global leadership … because it is right, but also because it is plainly in our self-interest.”

He put the climate at the heart of that aim. “Under my leadership, the UK will lead again, tackling climate change, at home and internationally and restoring our commitment to international development,” he said. “The threat of climate change is existential and it is happening in the here and now. So we have reset Britain’s approach. “

But the Guardian understands that there are qualms among some at the top of government, who are more cautious on net zero. The Tories, since Rishi Sunak made a U-turn on climate action a year ago, have taken the line that the UK should take a back seat and let other countries forge ahead in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Both of the party’s leadership contenders, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, have taken hostile positions on the race to net zero and would make it a main attack line as leader. Some Labour strategists fear this could be a vulnerability for the party.

Labour’s launch of GB Energy was in part intended to quell such fears, by presenting a future in which green jobs take over from the fossil fuel-dependent economy.

However, pushing for stronger action on the climate is likely to require more investment in the UK’s green infrastructure. Whether that is forthcoming will depend on Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer, when she presents her first autumn budget on 30 October.

Stern believes the path to the economic growth Reeves seeks must lie through low-carbon innovation. He said: “Investment with strong returns, financed long term at moderate cost, is good for the public finances as well as growth.”

Millions of critically endangered eels have been exported from the Severn estuary to Russia this year and conservationists fear export quotas will be increased next year.

A tonne of glass eels, the young elvers that swim into European estuaries from the Sargasso Sea each spring, was flown to Kaliningrad this year, double the amount exported to the Russian port the previous year.

Eel industry sources have told the Guardian that next year’s application could increase to 5 tonnes. One tonne of European glass eels amounts to about 3 million fish.

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a protected, red-listed species, with the number of elvers migrating into European rivers having declined by 95% since the 1980s.

In 2010 the EU banned the trade of European eels outside their natural range in Europe. Since Brexit it has been impossible for the UK to export glass eels to EU countries. But a legal loophole makes it permissible to catch and export elvers to non-EU destinations in their natural European range if they are used for conservation purposes, such as restocking lakes or rivers.

Andrew Kerr, of the Sustainable Eel Group, a European-wide body working with scientists, conservationists and commercial fishers, described the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) permitting the export of glass eels to Kaliningrad as “bonkers”.

According to Kerr, eels exported to the Russian port could be smuggled eastwards towards Asia, where there is huge demand for young eels to stock fish farms because no one has worked out how to captive-breed the enigmatic species, which can live for up to 50 years in European rivers and lakes before returning to their Sargasso Sea birthplace to breed.

“Trafficking in eel is the biggest wildlife crime of a living creature on the planet,” Kerr said. “It is such a risk to send them to Kaliningrad, the most notorious corner of Europe where everything is traded – humans, drugs, guns and eels.”

Peter Wood of UK Glass Eels, who has been exporting glass eels for more than 50 years, said a ban on eel exports to Russia would stop the traditional fishery on the River Severn because there were no other markets to export to. Exporting glass eels to Asia is forbidden.

“It would close the fishery. That will be hundreds of years of heritage and culture gone,” Wood said.

Last year, government scientists issued a “non-detriment” finding for eels, judging that until 2026 there was a harvestable surplus of glass eels on the River Severn and the River Parrett, even allowing for catch rates of up to 75% of the population. This enables their legal export.

Wood said he hoped to increase the amount of glass eels he would fly in his company plane to Kaliningrad next year. He said the eels were destined for a Russian ministry of agriculture-led “restocking” conservation project, whereby young eels are placed in the Vistula and Curonian lagoons, which Russia shares with Poland and Lithuania. From here, mature eels can reach the Baltic and, potentially, return to their Sargasso Sea breeding grounds.

“This is a fantastic project. It’s probably going to be the largest stocking project in Europe once it gets going. Everybody is a winner,” he said.

Of allegations that sending eels to Russia risked them being smuggled to Asia, Wood said: “I don’t think there is any evidence for that at all. This is a really forward-looking environmental project. We just do not see this level of care at a lot of these restocking projects in Europe. It’s absolutely transparent. They send Defra a very detailed report of the stocking that’s taken place and the mortalities in the quarantine station.”

He added: “Some of the problem is the moral dilemma of working with Russia. They’re not getting these glass eels for free. Every hundred kilos of glass eels they have, that’ll be one less missile they can afford to send.”

Kerr said it was not good conservation practice to send the eels to the eastern edge of their natural range, where individuals were less likely to make it back to the Sargasso than if they stayed in the Severn.

“We don’t know which silver [mature] eels make it back to the Sargasso Sea but the further they have to travel, the fewer will make it. Emptying a few eels into the east European edge of its range is not really conservation,” he said. “Restocking can be used as an emergency measure but it should be in addition to real conservation measures such as wetland and river restoration.”

The author Charles Foster, who has written about the plight of the eel, said: “The export of critically endangered species to an unknown fate cannot possibly be justified on the basis of tradition or economics or in any other way.”

Between 50 million and 100 million glass eels swim into the Severn each year. Scientists calculate that 40% of mature silver eels need to get back down the river and out to sea to ensure there will be a recovery in the global population. At present there is just 2.3% such escapement.

According to the government, applications to export eels are assessed on a case-by-case basis, and the single application from Wood’s company in 2024 met the requirements of the UK wildlife trade regulations. The eels were found to be legally and sustainably caught and there were no conservation factors judged to merit the application being refused.

A Defra spokesperson said: “We have robust rules and laws in place to safeguard protected species such as glass eels. Any applications to export them are scrutinised thoroughly by UK Cites authorities to ensure they are legal and sustainable. Any reports of illegal wildlife trafficking are taken very seriously and would be investigated by the Animal and Plant Health Agency and Border Force officials.”

It’s like gatecrashing a Bruegel every morning at Fairy Hill at the moment, and even with sunrise at 7.30am there is autumnal activity in the fields, rooks on the treetops, brown hares by the stone wall, the farmer on his quad and my nearest neighbour chopping wood. Sadly, the fine-looking but hapless young Aberdeen Angus bull is showing no inclination to mate with the females for a second season and is likely to be relegated. Small parties of migrant fieldfares and redwings are feasting on the worms, brought to the surface by the trampling of the 200 Holstein milkers, while the resident green woodpecker or “yaffle” laughs his way “doon the brae”.

But at this time of year it is overhead where the real action is, and just now several hundred noisy barnacle geese flew over on their way from Svalbard in the Arctic Circle to the Solway wetlands. When the stragglers arrive, their number will reach 30,000, the majority overwintering along the coast at WWT Caerlaverock.

On my trip to the vast Caerlaverock there were also a small number of dark-bellied brent geese down from Russia, pink-footed geese, and large flocks of lapwings and curlews. Over the high tide were huge numbers of dunlins and knots, forming a speedy but low-level murmuration.

As if things couldn’t get any better, I heard on the grapevine that there were two snow geese at RSPB Mereshead – also near the coast of the Solway Firth – where the mix of tidal and freshwater brine is a beacon for all manner of wildlife, including otters. The pure white geese stood out like, well, snow geese on a salt marsh. Just beautiful.

Back at the croft, my excitement is immediately tempered by the bleak reality that the resident family of roe deer here, which I’ve been watching closely for a year, have been shot. Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow comes to mind. There is of course a need for controlling deer in some areas because of the damage they can cause, and I have venison in my freezer, but these were my Fairy Hill companions, and all the woods are fenced to keep out the Holsteins. They bothered no one.

Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary

A woman was wedged between boulders for seven hours after she slipped head-first into a three-metre crevice while trying to retrieve her phone in regional New South Wales.

Matilda Campbell’s friends initially spent an hour attempting to free her while she was hanging upside down before they called triple zero for help, NSW Ambulance said this week.

The operation to free her from the “unlikely predicament” in the Hunter Valley on Saturday 12 October involved a team of “multidisciplinary” emergency workers.

They removed several heavy boulders to create a safe access point. Then, “with both feet now accessible”, the workers navigated Campbell – aged in her early 20s – feet first up through a “tight S bend”, which took an hour.

A specialist winch was used to move one 500kg boulder. A hardwood frame was also constructed to “ensure stability” during the rescue.

“In my 10 years as a rescue paramedic I had never encountered a job quite like this,” Peter Watts, a specialist rescue paramedic, said on Monday. “It was challenging but incredibly rewarding.

“Every agency had a role and we all worked incredibly well together to achieve a good outcome for the patient.”

Campbell was freed with only minor scratches and bruises. Her phone could not be retrieved, NSW Ambulance said.

Campbell posted on social media: “It’s safe to say I’m the most accidental prone person ever. I am OK just have some injuries I’m recovering from, no more rock exploration for me for a while!”

She said she “wanted to give the biggest shoutout to my friends [and] the team who worked so hard to get me out”.

“I’m forever thankful as most likely I would [otherwise] not be here today.”

Former One Direction singer Liam Payne had multiple drugs including crack cocaine and methamphetamine in his system when he fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Argentina, according to anonymous Argentinian sources familiar with the initial toxicology reports.

The British singer and former One Direction member died last week at the age of 31 after plunging from a third-floor hotel room in Buenos Aires.

ABC News and TMZ reported that a cocktail of drugs called “pink cocaine” – containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA – had been found during a partial autopsy, along with crack cocaine and benzodiazepine. Both outlets cited anonymous sources familiar with the preliminary tests.

Associated Press reported an anonymous official had said the preliminary toxicology report suggested evidence of exposure to cocaine, but stressing that these initial results don’t offer an accurate reading of just how much was circulating in his blood when he died.

The final toxicology results are not expected to be made public for some weeks.

Associated Press reported that the official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief journalists. The preliminary report was widely reported in local media on Monday.

Argentina’s public prosecution is investigating the case, which is not uncommon when a death is sudden or unexpected.

Payne’s autopsy concluded that the traumatic injuries that caused his death were consistent with his three-story fall from the hotel window. Prosecutors have ruled out anyone else being involved.

Argentinian investigators found what appeared to be narcotics and alcohol strewn about broken objects and furniture in 31-year-old Payne’s hotel room, leading the public prosecution to surmise Payne had suffered a substance abuse-induced breakdown around the time of his fall. The prosecution said Payne could have plunged from his hotel room balcony in a state of “semi or total unconsciousness”.

Photos purportedly taken from inside Payne’s hotel room published by local media showed snowlike powder left on a table and a smashed-in TV screen. Police also discovered a blister pack of clonazepam, a central nervous system depressant, and over-the-counter medications scattered among Payne’s belongings. Shortly before Payne’s death, the hotel manager called 911 to report a guest acting aggressively and under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Investigators are also trying to figure out who sold Payne the drugs he took at the CasaSur hotel in Palermo, a chic neighbourhood of the Argentinian capital. Police have taken statements from at least three hotel employees, as well as two women who visited Payne’s hotel room a few hours before his death.

Fans and major pop industry figures around the world have reacted with an outpouring of grief.

The late singer’s father, Geoff Payne, was still in Buenos Aires meeting with the prosecutors and other local officials on Monday in an effort to organise the repatriation of the remains.

Argentinian authorities expect to release the body next week, clearing the way for Geoff Payne to fly home and hold a funeral back in England, where on Sunday hundreds of fervent One Direction fans gathered to mourn the musician.

– Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Wildlife services are working to rescue a cockatoo called Mickey that has been “living on brioche” inside a Sydney supermarket for four weeks.

The New South Wales environment minister, Penny Sharpe, on Tuesday promised the bird was “not going to be shot” after false rumours of a “kill order” had spread online.

The minister said she had directed the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to work with grocery retailer Coles and rescue groups to help save Mickey.

“National Parks is in contact with wildlife rescue groups and staff at Coles Macarthur Square,” she said. “Mickey will be freed.”

Sharpe said wildlife rescue organisation Wires was planning to deploy another team on Tuesday to try and rescue the bird and “release him into the wild where he belongs”.

The bird has been stuck inside the Coles supermarket in Campbelltown for weeks, according to the Sydney Metropolitan Wildlife Services.

On Tuesday morning, another cockatoo, Old Lady Doris, was taken into the supermarket by the Feathered Friends bird rescue director Ravi Wasan in the hope Mickey would be reassured by her presence.

The plan looked like it could work, with Mickey initially flying down, before being spooked and retreating out of reach.

“He’s really scared because there’s been so many attempts – people trying to catch him,” Wasan said.

“He’s so scared but the other cockatoo, obviously, is so loving that it really reassured him. We got so so close … and then they opened the emergency doors and it spooked him.”

Wasan said Mickey looked “physically fine” and was not hungry because he was eating “really well” in the supermarket.

“He just needs to chill out, relax and come down without thinking that people are going to try and catch him,” he said.

“The exits where the cockatoo would go out are also the exits for patrons, so he just has to realise that the patrons … aren’t terrifying, which is obviously challenging when he sees everyone as a potential threat.”

Members of the Sydney Metropolitan Wildlife Services on Monday night attempted to lure the bird outside – although they were unsuccessful and described it as a “nightmare”.

“The poor bird hasn’t had any dark for over four weeks and has been living on brioche and water [placed] by the night manager – who is very fond of the bird,” the rescue group stated on social media.

“Two traps left but with so much food in the store, who knows if that will work. Hopefully, we exhausted him so much he will come down to a trap for water.”

Sharpe’s office said the rumours of a “kill order” that had circulated on social media were false. Coles was contacted for comment.

Israel has accused Hezbollah of keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker under a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, though it said it would not strike the complex.

The Sahel hospital in Dahiyeh was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Fadi Alame, its director, told Reuters that the allegations were untrue.

Israel did not provide evidence for its claim that cash was being kept under the hospital. Instead, it published an animated graphic that purported to show a bunker under the hospital and said it had previously been used to hide the former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel appealed to the Lebanese government to confiscate the money it said the Shia militant organisation had stolen from the Lebanese people.

Shortly after, Israel issued a series of warnings to residents of Dahiyeh that it would begin striking buildings in the area and that they should move at least 500 metres away. Those who remained in the area began to flee.

Airstrikes began about an hour later, with strong explosions heard across the Beirut area. One of the strikes hit just in front of the entrance of the Rafik Hariri university hospital, the largest public hospital in Lebanon. At least four people including a child were killed and 24 injured in the strike, and the hospital suffered “major damage” from the blast.

Despite the strike, the hospital’s activities continued as usual and it was receiving the injured from Monday night’s strikes, according to a source at the hospital.

The initial casualty count was expected to rise as first responders continued digging through the rubble for people. A picture of the building struck in front of Rafik Hairi hospital showed a man covered in blood lying lifeless in a bombed-out building.

Fears had proliferated that hospitals would be struck in the greater Beirut area after the Israeli allegations, which echoed similar claims in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces said Hamas ran military operations from medical buildings.

Lebanon’s ministry of health condemned what it said was “attacks on two of Lebanon’s largest hospitals” and part of Israel’s “daily targeting of the Lebanese health sector”. Israel has killed at least 115 healthcare workers and emergency responders since fighting started between Hezbollah and Israel a year before.

It was the second night in a row that Beirut was heavily bombed, with Israel carrying out more than 15 airstrikes on Hezbollah-linked banking institutions the night before.

On Sunday night, Israel said that it would begin targeting a Hezbollah-affiliated bank, Al-Qard Al-Hassan, which provides interest-free loans and banking services to hundreds of thousands of Lebanese – primarily Shia Muslims. It accused the bank of helping finance Hezbollah and said that its branches were used to store weapons.

The announcement that Israel would start targeting the bank, a part of Hezbollah’s civilian institutions, signified an expansion of the scope of Israel’s targets from just the group’s military wing. The institution had sanctions placed on it by the US in 2017 during the Trump administration for giving Hezbollah access to the international financial system, according to the US Treasury.

Al-Qard Al-Hassan was founded in the early 1980s as a charitable institution, part of Hezbollah’s robust social services network.

The banking institution became more popular after Lebanon’s 2019 financial crisis, when commercial banks froze almost all accounts and almost entirely stopped issuing loans. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people, primarily Shia Muslims, bank with Al-Qard Al-Hassan, many of them giving the bank familial assets such as gold in exchange for loans.

Shortly after saying it would begin striking Al-Qard Al-Hassan, Israel began striking buildings belonging to the bank in greater Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley.

At least 10 airstrikes were carried out in Dahiyeh, causing an entire building to collapse and a jet of fire to stream into the air in the Chiyah neighbourhood. A building close to Lebanon’s only commercial airport was also struck – video footage showed a smoke plume billowing while a nearby plane sat on the runway.

“They struck empty buildings in residential neighbourhoods, and destroyed those surrounding neighbourhoods. These weren’t military centres or weapons caches,” said Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The US envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut on Monday morning, where he met Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, and the country’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, to discuss ways towards a ceasefire.

Hochstein said implementation of the UN security council resolution 1701 was the path towards a ceasefire in Lebanon and rejected calls to amend the UN agreement.

Resolution 1701 ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and has since been the framework that governs security dynamics on the Lebanese-Israeli boundary. Under the terms of the agreement, Hezbollah and other armed militias must not be present past the Litani River, about 18 miles (30km) north of the border. The resolution also dictated that Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon.

The US navy identified on Monday the two crew members who died last week in a fighter-jet crash near Mount Rainier as two 31-year-old female aviators from California.

Lt Cdr Lyndsay P Evans, a naval flight officer, and Lt Serena N Wileman, a naval aviator, died when their EA-18G Growler jet from the Electronic Attack Squadron, known as “Zappers”, crashed east of Mount Rainier last Tuesday during a training flight, according to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

Evans of Palmdale, California, made history as part of a team of female pilots who conducted the first-ever all-female flyover of Super Bowl LVII on 12 Feburary 2023, to celebrate 50 years of women flying in the navy, Steve Fiebing, a navy spokesperson, told the Associated Press.

The first female candidates entered the US Navy flight school in 1973.

“I joined the navy to serve my country,” Evans told the Los Angeles Times. “Serving in the navy means being part of something bigger than yourself.”

Wileman was commissioned in 2018 and joined the Zapper squadron on Washington state’s Whidbey Island in 2021. She earned the national defense service medal, navy unit commendation medal and a combat action ribbon.

An aerial crew located the wreckage the day after the crash at about 6,000ft (1,828 metres) in a remote, steep and heavily wooded area east of Mount Rainier, officials said.

Navy officials declared the aviators dead on Sunday and said they’ve switched from search and rescue to recovery operations.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share the loss of two beloved Zappers,” said Cdr Timothy Warburton, commanding officer of Electronic Attack Squadron 130. “Our priority right now is taking care of the families of our fallen aviators, and ensuring the wellbeing of our sailors and the Growler community. We are grateful for the ongoing teamwork to safely recover the deceased.”

Personnel are recovering debris and planning for the long-term salvage and recovery effort, the navy said. Jay Inslee, Washington governor, said the Navy asked the Washington state national guard to “provide 24/7 security at assigned traffic control points”. Inslee granted the request Sunday.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

The first production of the Growler was delivered to Whidbey Island in 2008. In the past 15 years, the Growler has operated around the globe supporting major actions, the navy said. The plane seats a pilot in front and an electronics operator behind them.

“The EA-18G Growler aircraft we fly represents the most advanced technology in airborne Electronic Attack and stands as the Navy’s first line of defense in hostile environments,” the Navy said on its website. Each aircraft costs about $67m.

The United States senatorPatty Murray said said she was heartbroken to learn of the passing of Evans, whom she had met at the Naval Air Station last year.

“I am deeply grateful for her courage and sacrifice in service to our country,” Murray said in a statement. “She was a leader who broke barriers and made history.

“Similarly, I want to express my deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Lt Serena Wileman,” she continued. “I am so proud of both of these women for their trailblazing careers – their service has no doubt made a difference, clearing a path for the women who will come after them.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, got to the point in his presidential address last night: “Another state,” he said, was “joining the war against Ukraine”. He was referring to the growing intelligence that shows elite soldiers from North Korea are in Russia preparing to join what has become a fight that, in effect, extends all the way across Asia.

The effect will be greater than the numbers believed to be involved. On Friday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) reported that 1,500 members of Pyongyang’s special forces had crossed the border to Vladivostok in Russia’s far east to begin training and some degree of participation in the war in Ukraine.

In the past, isolated North Korea has sent pilots to Egypt, where they fought against Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and to Vietnam, where some flew sorties in secret against the US forces. But Pyongyang has never deployed such a large number of its troops abroad.

They represent the first element of what could be a 12,000-strong, four-brigade deployment, which represents a meaningful commitment – though still modest against the roughly 600,000 Russian troops already inside Ukraine. Given that Russia is losing an estimated 1,200 fighters a day in killed and wounded casualties during its autumn eastern offensive, the North Koreans could be quickly expended on the frontline.

It is not known what the North Koreans will do, though given Russia’s frontline tactics, which remain relatively careless of human lives, it is hard to imagine they would be dispatched into a winter effort to take Pokrovsk or another key location on Ukraine’s eastern front.

But Sam Cranny-Evans, of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, says the North Korean troops could be used in a variety of other roles: near the frontline “to support logistics and engineering – moving ammunition, digging fortifications” or deeper to the rear or inside Russia to free more of the Kremlin’s own troops, or simply to go “on a training rotation” where they would “simply be gaining combat knowledge”.

There is plenty for North Korea’s forces to learn, including on how cheap £300-£400 drones are shaping the battlefield in Ukraine, preventing concentrations of forces, and reducing the possibility of surprise.

But there are also evident political advantages for both parties, most notably a significant tightening of the relationship between two members of the “Axis of Upheaval” – the Russia, China, Iran and North Korea grouping whose members, to varying degrees, want to challenge western military hegemony.

“Russia has offered the kind of political support to Pyongyang that previously was seen only in Beijing, and emboldens the North [of Korea]. It may also be providing missile technology and possibly submarine technology,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a US thinktank, arguing that the Kremlin was using the war in Ukraine as an accelerant to bring the two countries together.

But South Korean intelligence has touched on something more significant, at least for Russia. The NIS believes it has monitored 70 shipments of munitions – shells, missiles and anti-tank rockets – going from North Korea to Russia since August last year, transporting on its estimate 8m rounds of arms, including Russian 152mm and 122mm shells so crucial for Moscow’s destructive frontline assaults.

If correct, these are significant quantities, and come at a time when the US election means it is unclear if military aid – gifts of weapons – to Ukraine from the world’s remaining superpower will continue. Europe continues to struggle to ramp up its own munitions production, with the EU acknowledging that at the end of August it had only delivered 650,000 shells out of the 1m it had promised to send before April.

A $50bn loan for Ukraine from G7 countries funded from the interest accrued on Russian assets frozen by the west is expected to be confirmed as the World Bank and IMF meet later this week, which may help offset some of the pressure. But Russia’s relentless focus on prosecuting the war and deepening its relationship with one of the few allies willing to help it shows that the challenge faced by Kyiv remains intense.