North Korean troops suffer heavy casualties in Russia, Ukraine says

KYIV, Ukraine – North Korean troops, deployed to bolster Russian forces in their war on Ukraine, have suffered “significant losses” in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine officials said Monday.

As many as 30 have been “killed or wounded,” Ukrainian military intelligence said, among the heaviest losses for North Korean forces yet reported by Ukraine.

North Korea has joined Russia as Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine grinds toward a fourth year. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov last month reported the first clashes between North Korean and Ukrainian forces, but he did not detail casualties. U.S. officials say Russia has deployed some 8,000 North Koreans in the Kursk region, the border where Ukrainian forces seized Russian territory in a surprise attack over the summer.

North Korea sustained the losses in weekend fighting near the Russian villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha, and Martynovka, according to Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence.

“At least three North Korean personnel went missing” near the village of Kurilovka, it said on Telegram.

North Korean forces were being “replenished” to “continue active combat operations in the area,” the GUR said. The reports could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Moscow had begun to use a “significant number” of Pyongyang’s forces for military assaults on the front line in Kursk.

Speaking in his regular evening video address, Zelensky said the Russian military was using the North Korean forces in “consolidated units” in the Kursk region but might also deploy them “in other parts of the front” – a dangerous potential escalation, he said.

“Moscow has drawn another state into this war, and drawn it as much as possible,” Zelensky said. “It is Putin who is taking steps that are expanding and prolonging this war. It is he who is pushing back the possibility of peace. And he wants the world to have more problems in Asia. That is why the Russians are teaching North Korea modern warfare.”

Social media users posted videos they claimed showed North Korean forces storming Ukrainian positions and lying wounded or dead in snow.

Pentagon officials said in October that up to 10,000 North Korean soldiers had been sent to eastern Russia for military training. Ukrainian and South Korean officials estimated their number at 12,000 to 19,000.