About 1,000 North Koreans were killed in the Ukrainian battle in Kursk, officials say

Western officials have told the BBC that North Korean troops have already suffered almost 40% casualties in three months of fighting in Russia’s western Kursk region.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said 4,000 of the 11,000 troops sent from North Korea, known as the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), had been killed in action.

This term includes those killed, wounded, missing or captured. Of those 4,000, officials said about 1,000 had died by mid-January.

These losses, if confirmed, are unbearable for the North Koreans.

It is not clear where the wounded are being treated, nor when and to what extent they will be replaced.

But the figures point to a staggering cost for President Vladimir Putin’s ally, Kim Jong Un, as he seeks to help push Ukrainian forces out of Russia ahead of possible ceasefire talks at the end of the year.

Ukraine launched a lightning bolt into Russia’s Kursk Oblast last August, catching Russian border guards by surprise.

The Kyiv government made it clear at the time that it had no intention of holding on to the seized territory, only to use it as a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.

Ukraine’s early gains in Kursk have been steadily reversed, in part due to North Korea’s arrival in Russia in October.

But Ukraine still holds hundreds of square kilometers of Russian territory and is inflicting heavy losses on its enemy.

The North Korean troops, from an “elite” unit called the Storm Corps, appear to have entered the battle with little training or protection.

“These are barely trained troops led by Russian officers who don’t understand them,” says former British Army tank commander Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

“Frankly, they don’t have a choice. They’re being thrown into a meat grinder with little chance of survival. They’re cannon fodder, and the Russian officers care even less about them than their own men.”

Reports attributed to South Korean intelligence say the North Koreans are unprepared for the realities of modern warfare, and appear particularly vulnerable to Ukrainian First-Person-View (FPV) drones, a weapon that has been a familiar part of the battlefield. further south in the Donbas region of Ukraine they have been for years.

However, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, warned earlier this week that North Korean soldiers were creating a significant problem for Ukrainian front-line fighters.

“They are numerous. 11,000-12,000 more highly motivated and well-trained soldiers who are carrying out offensive actions. They operate based on Soviet tactics. They operate in buttons, companies. They are based on their numbers,” the general told Ukraine’s TSN Tyzhden. the news