Thousands of North Korean troops have arrived in Kursk, the western Russian province partly occupied by Ukraine, ahead of an expected counteroffensive by Moscow.
Soldiers from an elite unit of the Korean People’s Army dispatched to the region have not started fighting alongside Russian troops, but officials predicted they would help in an anticipated campaign aimed at driving out Ukrainian forces, who seized about 400 square miles of territory in Kursk in a surprise August incursion, officials told The New York Times.
The soldiers’ dispatch to Kursk, with the first arriving Wednesday, came after Ukraine and South Korea warned for weeks that North Korean forces were training alongside Russian soldiers, with Ukraine estimating as many as 12,000 troops are involved.
Thousands of North Korean troops appear to have arrived in the Russian province of Kursk this week. KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Images
Video posted on Telegram shows North Korean troops being stationed at a military training site in the village of Sergeyevka in the Russian Far East region, The Times reported.
“Here they are. The boys from North Korea,” a man’s voice is reportedly heard in a clip shared by Astra, a Russian independent media organization, according to The Times.
Another video showed men, referred to as North Koreans, standing around and smoking while wearing the standard set of Russian fatigues, The Times reported.
One senior Ukrainian official told The Times as many as 5,000 North Korean troops are expected to assemble in Kursk by Monday.
The official said it was unclear whether additional troops would be sent out to fight in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, citing intelligence sources, warned the North Korean troops could be deployed to the battlefield in Kursk as soon as Sunday and called Moscow’s use of Pyongyang’s forces in combat zones a “clear escalation by Russia.”
Ukraine has held on to the majority of the territory it seized during its forces’ daring August incursion, although Russia set its sights on Kyiv’s positions there this month and managed to claw back some 150 square miles, The Times reported.
Ukraine estimated up to 12,000 North Korean troops have trained alongside Russian forces. KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian soldiers seized roughly 400 square miles of Russian territory in Kursk in August, although Moscow managed to claw back some of the land. AFP via Getty Images
More concerning for Kyiv, however, is that the territory’s occupation has failed to achieve its main goal of diverting Russian forces from fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Moscow has slowly but steadily advanced.
Ukraine nonetheless has managed to leverage its use of drones to inflict devastating pain on Russia and help shape the course of the nearly three-year war, which some see as a potential tool to leverage a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Despite restrictions by Western allies on Kyiv using weapons they have provided to hit deep inside Russian territory, Ukraine has managed to conduct long-range strikes on missile storage facilities and strategic fuel reservoirs hundreds of miles inside Russia with its own, domestically-produced drones and missiles, The Journal reported.
In other news:
- The Group of Seven countries agreed to deliver $50 billion loan package to Ukraine as early as December, which will be backed by earnings generated from frozen Russian assets.
- A Russian drone struck an apartment building in Kyiv Friday evening, sparking a fire that killed a 14-year-old girl and injured five, according to officials. Meanwhile, Russian missile strikes on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro hit several residential buildings and a hospital, killing at least five and injuring 21, authorities said. “Russian murderers have resumed their usual business,” Zelensky said in a social media post Saturday. “This proves once again that aggression cannot be stopped by words alone but only by decisive action in defense of the state and the people against whom this war is waged.”
With Post wires.