TAIPEI, Taiwan – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded in Russia’s Kursk region, while South Korea said the North appeared to be preparing to send more troops and military equipment to Russia.
American, South Korean and Ukrainian authorities have said there are up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers inside Russia, deployed there primarily to help Russia push Ukrainian forces out of positions taken in Kursk.
“According to preliminary data, the number of killed and wounded North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region already exceeds 3,000 people,” said Zelenskyy on his Telegram channel on Monday, following a briefing by Kyiv’s top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, on the battle in Kursk.
Zelenskyy’s estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that of South Korea, where authorities said on Monday at least 1,100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded.
The Ukrainian president warned that North Korea could send more personnel and equipment for Russia’s army and he criticized world leaders for doing “almost nothing” to counteract Russia’s military cooperation with the North.
“There are risks of sending additional soldiers and military equipment to the Russian army from North Korea,” Zelenskyy added, vowing “tangible responses” to any such move.
South Korea’s military also said on Monday that it has detected signs of North Korea preparing to send more troops and weapons, including so-called suicide drones, or loitering munitions, to Russia.
“A comprehensive assessment of multiple intelligence shows that North Korea is preparing to rotate or increase the deployment of troops [in Russia], while currently supplying 240 millimeter rocket launchers and 170 mm self-propelled artillery,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS, said.
“There are also some signs of [the North] moving to manufacture and supply suicide drones, first unveiled during Kim Jong Un’s on-site inspection in November,” the JCS added.
Kim observed an on-site test of various types of suicide attack drones, calling for the full-scale production of the weapons that are increasingly becoming important in modern warfare due to their cost effectiveness.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, or SSO, posted photos of what it said were North Korean troops killed in Russia’s western Kursk region, while uploading purportedly fabricated Russian military identity cards.
“Russia is trying to hide the presence of military personnel from North Korea by issuing them with fake documents,” said the SSO on its Telegram channel.
The SSO’s report came after Zelenskyy said last week that Russian forces were burning the faces of North Korean soldiers killed in assaults on Ukrainian positions to conceal their identities and keep secret their deployment to help Russia in its war, posting a video as evidence.
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Neither President Vladimir Putin nor North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has confirmed the North’s troop deployment to Russia. But reports indicate that ties between two countries are progressing swiftly.
North Korea has also been suspected of sending weapons to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine. South Korea said in October that the North had sent about 7,000 containers of weapons over the previous two months, bringing the total number of containers to 20,000.
On Monday, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said that he thought it was likely North Korean troops would participate in Russia’s Red Square parade next year.
During a visit to Pyongyang last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov invited the North Korean military to attend the parade that marks the defeat of Germany at the end of World War II in 1945..
Edited by Mike Firn.
