About 1,000 North Koreans killed fighting Ukraine in Kursk, officials say

Western officials told the BBC that North Korean troops have already suffered nearly 40 percent casualties in fighting in the Kursk region of western Russia in just three months.

The officials, who requested anonymity, said that of the 11,000 troops sent from North Korea, known as the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), 4,000 were killed in action.

This term includes people killed, injured, missing or captured. Of these 4,000 people, according to authorities, around 1,000 were killed by mid-January.

These losses, if confirmed, would be unbearable for the North Koreans.

It is not clear where the injured are being treated, or even when and to what extent they will be replaced.

But the figures point to an extraordinarily high cost to President Vladimir Putin’s ally, like Kim Jong Un, as he seeks to help him expel Ukrainian forces from Russia ahead of possible ceasefire negotiations. late in the year.

Ukraine launched a lightning attack in Russia’s Kursk oblast last August, taking Russian border guards by surprise.

The kyiv government made it clear at the time that it did not intend to keep the conquered territory, but simply to use it as a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.

Ukraine’s initial progress at Kursk has since been steadily rebuffed, in part due to the arrival of the North Koreans in Russia in October.

But Ukraine still retains several hundred square kilometers of Russian territory and inflicts enormous losses on its enemy.

The North Korean troops, apparently part of an “elite” unit called the Storm Corps, appear to have been thrown into combat with relatively little training or protection.

“These are barely trained troops, led by Russian officers they don’t understand,” says former British Army tank commander Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

“Frankly, they don’t stand a chance. They are thrown into the meat grinder with little chance of survival. They are cannon fodder and the Russian officers care even less about them than their own men.”

Reports attributed to South Korean intelligence indicate that the North Koreans are unprepared for the realities of modern warfare and appear particularly vulnerable to Ukrainian first-person view (FPV) drones, a familiar weapon in space combat. further south, in the Ukrainian region of Donbass, for years.

Despite this, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, warned earlier this week that North Korean soldiers posed a significant problem for Ukrainian fighters on the front line.

“There are many of them. In addition, 11,000 to 12,000 highly motivated and well-prepared soldiers are carrying out offensive actions. They operate according to Soviet tactics. They act in sections, in companies. They rely on their numbers,” the general said Ukrainian to TSN Tyzhden. information program.