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North Korean troops have fought for the first time alongside Russian forces against Ukrainian soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region and taken heavy casualties, the Pentagon said on Monday.
Ukrainian troops launched an incursion into Kursk in the summer, and Kyiv said in October that 11,000 North Korea soldiers were being deployed there to help Russian forces try to retake the region.
“We do assess that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat in Kursk,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday, following Ukrainian reports of Pyongyang’s troops entering the fray.
“We do have indications that they have suffered casualties, both killed and wounded.”
The GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, said the North Korean troops had been embedded with Russian marine and airborne forces that had launched attacks around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha and Martynovka in Kursk.
Ukrainian forces responded by deploying suicide drones and heavy artillery against the Russian and North Korean troops.
The GUR estimated 200 casualties on the Russian side, including 30 North Koreans killed or wounded. The Financial Times could not independently verify the information.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday evening the Russians were “trying to conceal the losses of the North Koreans” and that his intelligence agencies were “working to determine the full extent of the actual losses”.
Videos purportedly showing the attacks involving the North Korean troops on Ukrainian forces were circulated on Telegram by the Ukraine’s military.
Some showed soldiers scrambling on foot over snowy terrain, with shells exploding around them.
One video made by a Ukrainian drone showed the bodies of 23 soldiers, all supposedly North Koreans.
The Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv-based security think-tank, said in a briefing on Monday evening that the North Korean troops “were forced to overcome Ukrainian minefields up to 2km deep to assault the ruins of Plekhovo”.
The GUR said North Korean assault groups were “being replenished with fresh personnel” after the losses “to continue active combat operations” in Kursk.
It added the initial Russian-North Korean attacks had encountered communication problems, which resulted in costly mistakes.
“The language barrier remains a difficult obstacle to control and co-ordination of actions,” the GUR said.
It claimed this had led to a “friendly fire” incident in which North Korean troops had mistakenly attacked a unit of Chechen soldiers fighting alongside them.
Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Russia had begun to use “a significant number” of North Korean soldiers in their assaults on Ukrainian military positions in Kursk.
He said the Russians were only using them for operations in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces made an incursion in August, but warned their deployment could extend to other parts of the front line.
Russian troops have in recent months made the fastest and biggest territorial advances on the battlefield inside Ukraine since Moscow’s full- scale invasion in 2022, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russian forces are now just 3km from the strategic city of Pokrovsk, according to Ukrainian military officials and analysts.
The Kremlin has not confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk but President Vladimir Putin signalled in October that they had arrived, saying “he never doubted at all that the North Korean leadership takes our [mutual security] agreements seriously”.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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