The engagement of North Korean soldiers alongside the Russian army against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region “did not have a significant impact” on the course of the fighting, a Ukrainian military intelligence official told AFP.
According to Kiev, 12,000 North Korean soldiers, including “about 500 officers and three generals”, are in the region that borders Ukraine and where Ukrainian forces have controlled territory since August.
Neither Russia nor North Korea have ever confirmed the presence of these forces alongside the Russian military.
“The participation of the North Koreans in the fighting did not have a significant effect on the situation. It’s not a large number of men,” Yevhen Ierin, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service (GUR), told AFP.
As he pointed out, North Korean troops lack experience in the modern needs of warfare, especially against drones that are everywhere on the battlefield, and (those troops) use “more primitive tactics, dating back to World War II or the period immediately after the Second World War”.
“However, they are learning. And we cannot underestimate the enemy. And we can see that they are already taking certain things into account in their operations,” the official added.
According to GUR, these soldiers have been deployed mainly near the cities of Ruskaia Konopelka, Plekhovo and Ulanok in Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” since joining Russia. Seoul, for its part, spoke yesterday of 1,100 “dead or wounded”.
The national defense general staff in Seoul also noted preparations that suggest North Korea is preparing to bolster its military forces in Russia, beyond drones.
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