WASHINGTON − Ukraine’s spies say they intercepted phone calls showing chaos as Russia works to integrate North Korean troops into its military operations.
Some of the calls were intercepted from troops involved in defending Kursk, a region of Russia on Ukraine’s northern border where Ukrainian troops seized territory in August, according to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Russian military assigned one translator and three Russian servicemembers to every 30 North Korean soldiers, the spy agency said it learned from the calls.
But Russian soldiers on the intercepted calls appeared doubtful that they would have enough commanders to lead the new units, or enough weapons and ammunition to arm them 979 days into Moscow’s invasion.
In one call that the spy agency said was recorded within Kursk, a Russian soldier was “outraged” at a commander who ordered troops to provide Russian armored vehicles – already in short supply – to the newly arrived North Korean troops.
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“I want to kill him today, yes, after the Koreans,” one soldier says, according to the audio.
On another call, a soldier complained that there were not enough translators. “We all work like translators now,” he said.
In the expletive-laced audio, another soldier crudely referred to the troops as “Chinese.”
The agency said it also learned that Russian police stopped a truck full of North Korean soldiers driving to Kursk on Sunday because the driver did not have a “combat order.”
It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to strengthen ties and share intelligence about the approximately 12,000 North Korean troops he said will move to Russian military bases.
Ukraine and South Korea plan to “exchange delegations,” he said in a post to X.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s foreign minister arrived in eastern Russia and will travel to Moscow for her second visit within six weeks, Russian state media reported, although the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not plan to meet with her.
The Pentagon said Monday that around 10,000 North Korean troops are now at military posts in Russia’s eastern region, and could be deployed to Kursk in the coming weeks – an increase from its estimate last week of 3,000.
“We are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast near the border with Ukraine,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said Monday.
Contributing: Reuters