North Korea sends additional troops to Russia — Seoul
South Korea's National Intelligence Service has found that North Korea deployed additional troops to Russia, KBS and Newsis report.
According to intelligence, North Korean troops have returned to the front line in Kursk Oblast after about a month of lull.
North Korea has also deployed additional troops, but the exact number has not yet been determined.
This is the second deployment of troops since October 2024. A military official in Seoul told KBS that this time North Korea appears to have sent over a thousand troops.
Iin late January, the New York Times reported that North Korean soldiers had not been seen on the front line for about two weeks, but they may be returning to the front in Kursk Oblast of the Russian Federation. South Korean intelligence later confirmed the withdrawal of the military.
At the same time, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo Budanov, denied this. He said that North Korean troops were still fighting on the front line in Kursk Oblast, although their activity had decreased due to losses.
Already in February, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Russia had again brought in soldiers from the DPRK for fighting in Kursk Oblast.
More about the North Korean military in the war against Ukraine
In October 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that he had received information about Russia training two units of North Korean soldiers, each with 6,000 people. As of January, Zelenskyy reported that 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been neutralized in Kursk Oblast of the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian military personnel say that North Korean soldiers do not want to surrender, but instead take their comrades or commit suicide if they are threatened with capture. They also do not take people prisoner - Ukrainian soldiers who wanted to surrender were killed.
Russia is trying to hide the participation of North Koreans in hostilities. According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces' Special Operations Forces Command, they were recorded in documents as Tuvans. Zelenskyy stated that there were cases of faces being burned so that the bodies could not be identified.
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