Russia, China and South Africa are set to begin naval drills off South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast Friday in a demonstration of the three countries’ close ties amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s tense relationship with the West. The 10 days of exercises, named Mosi II, will coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. A Russian frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov, arrived in Cape Town earlier this week sporting the letters Z and V on its sides, letters that mark Russian weapons on the front lines in Ukraine and are used as a patriotic symbol in Russia. In protest, a small yacht flying Ukraine’s flag sailed by the Russian frigate in Cape Town’s harbor. South African protesters opposed to the exercises are expected to demonstrate at the Russian Consulate in Cape Town on Friday. The arrival of the Admiral Gorshkov has stirred considerable controversy because it is armed with the latest Zircon hypersonic missiles, a weapon that Russia says can penetrate any missile defenses to strike targets at sea and on land. The warship is set to test-fire a Zircon missile during the joint naval drills, according to Russian state news agency Tass. The test will be the first launch of the missile in an international exercise. In addition to the Admiral Gorshkov, other ships participating in the maritime exercises will include a Russian oil tanker for refueling, a South African frigate and three Chinese ships - a destroyer, a frigate and a support vessel, according to a South African military statement. The joint naval exercises also come as China’s relations with Washington are tense after its balloon sailed across the U.S. and was eventually shot down by the U.S. The maritime exercises will be staged from Durban and Richards Bay, ports in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Media coverage of the drills has been restricted. South Africa has faced domestic criticism for participating in the drills. The opposition Democratic Alliance said it shows South Africa is not neutral in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The South African National Defence Force has described the naval exercises with China and Russia simply as “a multinational maritime exercise.” The naval drills will “strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China” with the aim of sharing “operational skills and knowledge,” the military said in a statement. At least 350 members of South Africa’s navy and other military branches are expected to participate in the exercise, the government has said. The three countries previously held the Mosi I naval drills in Cape Town in 2019. South Africa is among many African countries that have friendly relations with Moscow and abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia and the United States have courted support from South Africa since the war in Ukraine started, indicating Pretoria’s influence as a strategic partner on the continent. The two super powers have vied for influence in Africa, sending top officials on diplomatic missions to the continent in recent months. High-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, recently visited South Africa to deepen diplomatic, political and economic ties. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House in September 2022. During a visit to South Africa last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the West’s actions in support of Ukraine and emphasized Russia’s strong ties with South Africa and other nations on the continent.  

Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov successfully test-fired a Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile from the Barents Sea on Saturday, Russia's Defense Ministry said. The missile hit a naval target about 1,000 km away in the White Sea and the flight of the projectile corresponded to the designed parameters, it added. Also Read: Russia slams sanctions, seeks to blame West for food crisis The Tsirkon missile has been test-fired several times from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and a nuclear-powered submarine. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Tsirkon missile is capable of flying at Mach 9 or nine times the speed of sound and striking a target over 1,000 km away.    

North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a successful flight test of a hypersonic missile he claimed would remarkably increase the country’s nuclear “war deterrent.” The report by North Korean state media on Wednesday came a day after the militaries of the United States, South Korea and Japan said they detected North Korea firing a suspected ballistic missile into its eastern sea. The Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday’s launch involved a hypersonic glide vehicle, which after its release from the rocket booster demonstrated “glide jump flight” and “corkscrew maneuvering” before hitting a sea target 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away. Photos released by the agency showed a missile mounted with a pointed cone-shaped payload soaring into the sky while leaving a trail of orange flames and Kim watching from a small cabin with top officials, including his sister Kim Yo Jong. The launch was North Korea’s second test of its purported hypersonic missile in a week, a type of weaponry it first tested in September, as Kim Jong Un continues a defiant push to expand his nuclear weapons capabilities in the face of international sanctions, pandemic-related difficulties and deadlocked diplomacy with the United States. The North has been ramping up its testing activity since last fall in what experts see as an attempt to apply more pressure on rivals Washington and Seoul to accept it as a nuclear power in hopes of winning relief from economic sanctions. It was the first time since March 2020 that North Korean state media reported Kim’s attendance at a missile test, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. The KCNA said Kim praised the accomplishments made by his military scientists and officials involved in developing the hypersonic missile system, which he described as the most significant part of a new five-year plan announced in early 2021 to build up the North’s military force. The North has described the new missile as part of its “strategic” weaponry, implying that the system is being developed to deliver nuclear weapons. “The superior maneuverability of the hypersonic glide vehicle was more strikingly verified through the final test-fire,” KCNA said. It said Kim stressed the need to speed up the expansion of the country’s “strategic military muscle both in quality and quantity and further modernize the army” and encouraged military scientists to continue their success in “remarkably increasing the war deterrent of the country.” Hypersonic weapons, which fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, could pose a crucial challenge to missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability. Such weapons were on a wish-list of sophisticated military assets Kim unveiled early last year along with multi-warhead missiles, spy satellites, solid-fuel long-range missiles and submarine-launched nuclear missiles. Experts say North Korea needs more successful and longer-range tests that would take years before acquiring a credible hypersonic system. Kim’s attendance at Tuesday’s test and state media’s description of the event as a “final test-fire” could indicate that North Korea is pushing to deploy the weapon relatively soon. But it’s more likely that the North will continue testing to increase the system’s range, stability and accuracy, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington condemns the North’s latest launch, which violates multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and poses a threat to neighbors and to the broader international community. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the launch highlighted the “destabilizing impact of (North Korea’s) illicit weapons program” but didn’t pose an immediate threat to U.S. territory or its allies. “We continue to call on the DPRK to refrain from further provocations and, importantly, to engage in sustained and substantive dialogue,” Price said, using an abbreviation of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Minutes after Tuesday’s launch, airports across the western United States halted flights for a short time without explanation. A spokeswoman for San Diego International Airport referred questions to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA acknowledged the “ground stop” in a tweet, without offering a reason why it issued the order. “Full operations resumed in less than 15 minutes,” the FAA said. “The FAA regularly takes precautionary measures. We are reviewing the process around this ground stop as we do after all such events.” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff had said the North Korean missile flew 700 kilometers (434 miles) at a maximum speed of around Mach 10 before landing in waters off the North’s eastern coast. South Korea’s Defense Ministry had played down North Korea’s earlier test on Jan. 5, insisting that the North exaggerated its capabilities after testing a conventional ballistic missile and expressing doubt that the North had acquired the technologies needed for hypersonic weapons. Following Tuesday’s launch, the Joint Chief of Staff said in a statement that the North demonstrated more advanced capability compared to its previous test, but didn’t elaborate further. Kim Jong Un entered the new year renewing his vow to bolster his military forces, even as the nation grapples with pandemic-related difficulties that have further strained its economy, crippled by U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear program. The economic setbacks have left Kim with little to show for his diplomacy with former U.S. President Donald Trump, which derailed after their second meeting in 2019 when the Americans rejected North Korea’s demand for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities. The Biden administration, whose policies have reflected a broader shift in U.S. focus from counterterrorism and so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iran to confronting a near-peer adversary in China, has said it’s willing to resume talks with North Korea at any time without preconditions. But North Korea has so far rejected the idea of open-ended talks, saying the U.S. must first withdraw its “hostile policy,” a term Pyongyang mainly uses to describe the sanctions and joint U.S.-South Korea military drills.

North Korea claimed Thursday to have conducted the second successful test flight of a hypersonic missile, days after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to bolster his military forces despite pandemic-related difficulties. Wednesday’s launch, the North’s first known weapons test in about two months, indicates the country will press ahead with plans to modernize its nuclear and missile arsenals rather than return to disarmament talks anytime soon. The official Korean Central News Agency said the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party expressed “great satisfaction” at the results of the missile test, which was observed by leading weapons officials. Hypersonic weapons, which fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, could pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability. It’s unclear whether and how soon North Korea could manufacture such a high-tech missile, but it was among a wish-list of sophisticated military assets that Kim disclosed early last year, along with a multi-warhead missile, spy satellites, solid-fueled long-range missiles and underwater-launched nuclear missiles. Read: North Korea fires suspected ballistic missile into sea Wednesday’s test was the second of its kind since North Korea first launched a hypersonic missile last September. “The successive successes in the test launches in the hypersonic missile sector have strategic significance in that they hasten a task for modernizing strategic armed force of the state,” a KCNA dispatch said. The word “strategic” implies the missile is being developed to deliver nuclear weapons. KCNA said the missile made a 120-kilometer-long (75 mile) lateral movement before hitting a target 700 kilometers (435 miles) away. It said the test reconfirmed the flight control and stability of the missile and verified its fuel capsule under the winter weather conditions. While North Korea appears to have made progress in the development of a hypersonic missile, it still needs more test flights to determine whether it meets its tactical objectives or how advanced a hypersonic weapon it could develop, said Lee Choon Geun, an expert and honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute. A photo of the launch shows that the upper parts of the missiles launched in September and this week have different shapes. Lee said this suggests that North Korea is testing two versions of warheads for a missile still under development or it is actually developing two different types of hypersonic missiles. He said the missile’s reported lateral movement would provide the weapon with a greater maneuverability to evade enemy missile defense systems. Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said North Korea will likely go ahead with its arms build-up plans without being affected by external factors like the Beijing Olympics in February, the South Korean presidential election in March and a possible change in the Biden administration’s North Korea policy. “Given the U.S. has decided on a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, North Korea doesn’t have to worry about what China would think when it conducts” weapons tests, Kim said. China is North Korea’s last major ally and aid benefactor. Some experts earlier predicted that North Korea would not launch any provocations until the Beijing Olympics ended. Tae Yongho, a former North Korean diplomat who now serves as a lawmaker in South Korea, wrote on Facebook that Pyongyang is keeping its borders shut due to fears about the pandemic. But he said Pyongyang is still working to perfect its missile technology to boost its position in any future negotiations. The North’s latest launch was first detected by its neighbors. Read: US urges NKorea to stop missile tests and return to talks The U.S. military called it a ballistic missile launch that “highlights the destabilizing impact of (North Korea’s) illicit weapons program,” while South Korea and Japan expressed concerns or regrets over the launch. China, for its part, called for dialogue and said that “all parties concerned should keep in mind the big picture (and) be cautious with their words and actions.” U.S.-led diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program remains stalled since 2019 due to disputes over international sanctions on the North. The Biden administration has repeatedly called for resuming the nuclear diplomacy “anywhere and at any time” without preconditions, but North Korea has argued the U.S. must first withdraw its hostility against it before any talks can restart. During last week’s plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim Jong Un repeated his vow to expand his country’s military capabilities without publicly presenting any new positions on Washington and Seoul. The North’s advancing nuclear arsenal is the core of Kim’s rule, and he’s called it “a powerful treasured sword” that thwarts potential U.S. aggressions. During his 10-year rule, he’s conducted an unusually large number of weapons tests to acquire an ability to launch nuclear strikes on the American mainland. But his country’s economy has faltered severely in the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sanctions and his government’s own mismanagement.