North Korean troops are not only in Kursk but also in Russia’s neighboring Belgorod region. The North Koreans in Belgorod and Kursk will be used to reinforce Russia’s second lines of defense, freeing up Russian soldiers to press forward for new assaults on northeastern Ukraine. Russian soldiers are still under immense pressure in Kursk, and in some cases severely struggling to resupply. Ukraine has identified locations where the North Koreans are located "and those positions have been hit."
Ukrainian troops fighting inside Russia are bracing for clashes with North Korean forces as officials in Kyiv warn that combat with Russia’s new allies has already begun, marking a dangerous new phase of the war as Donald Trump’s election adds to further uncertainty over Ukraine’s future.
Ukrainian forces are already struggling inside Russia’s Kursk region, where they seized hundreds of square miles in a surprise August offensive but have since lost nearly half that territory. U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that there are now at least 10,000 North Korean troops in the Kursk region, probably to buoy the Russian attempt to retake the final Ukrainian foothold that has irritated Russian President Vladimir Putin even as he tries to brush it off as insignificant. Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles battalion in Ukraine’s 92nd Brigade, based in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, said he has reviewed intelligence — including intercepted communications — confirming that North Korean troops are not only in Kursk but also in Russia’s neighboring Belgorod region.
For nearly three years, Russia has staged attacks on Ukraine from Belgorod, including one surprise offensive in the spring aimed at encircling the city of Kharkiv. Ukraine sent troops across the border into the BelgoroFedorenko said he believes the North Korean troops in Belgorod will be used to reinforce Russia’s second lines of defense, freeing up Russian soldiers to press forward for new assaults on northeastern Ukraine, in what he described as “a massive threat.”
“Having the North Koreans here is a bold political signal to the rest of the world. And if the world can swallow this presence right now, it will be very hard to go back to the situation where we had leverage to win this war on Ukrainian terms,” Fedorenko said. “Currently we are falling into a situation where we will end this war on Russia’s terms, and it may even result in the dissolution of the Ukrainian state.”d region in August, but they failed to take land as they did in Kursk. The new threat comes amid a period of great uncertainty for Ukraine and the vital military support it receives from the United States, with Donald Trump’s election victory this week. The president-elect has been critical of the billions given to Ukraine and may push for peace closer to Russia’s terms.
Speaking to European leaders in Budapest on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the North Korean deployment as a test to see how the West reacts.
“I don’t know how many more soldiers will arrive from North Korea or Iran. There could be more. … What will we do if 100,000 North Korean soldiers come? If they come to our territory, what will we do?” he said. “What will the West do? What will the United States do? Many questions, much rhetoric, and few decisive steps from leaders.” Even before large-scale combat with the new arrivals has begun, the deployment of North Korean troops is infiltrating the psyche of Ukrainian soldiers — probably one of Putin’s goals in the new partnership with Pyongyang. In conversations with more than a dozen Ukrainian troops fighting in Kursk, soldiers described obsessing over the whereabouts of the North Koreans.
Several claimed they had seen reliable photos of North Koreans in the region, and one said he had seen six of them from a drone near his position in Kursk this week. Another said he had personally seen a North Korean, a fact disputed by his fellow soldiers who interrupted him to say they believed that the person he saw was actually a Russian soldier from the Siberian Buryat ethnic minority.
Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence agencies have reported that Russia planned to deploy the North Korean troops under the guise of Buryat soldiers, in part to hide their identity. Oleksandr, 39, a Ukrainian soldier who works in intelligence for Ukraine’s 82nd Brigade in the Kursk region, said he has reviewed transcripts of intercepted conversations between Russian troops where they appear to refer to the arrival of North Koreans, calling them “the yellow ones” or “our allies.” He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
He was quick to note that the Russians might have known the Ukrainians were listening in and were just trying to spook them with these comments.
As Ukraine prepares for North Koreans to deploy to multiple fronts, “everyone will expect them, so everyone will hear them,” Oleksandr said. “I will be sure only if I see them on the battlefield.”
Andrii Kovalenko from Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said that North Korean troops have been deployed to areas near the front line in Kursk to be “trained in actual combat conditions to use FPV drones.”
Within three months, he said, the North Koreans would be ready to replace a Russian combat soldier, but meanwhile, Ukraine has identified locations where they are located.
“We know that there are North Koreans in these positions, and those positions have been hit,” he said. “I cannot comment on casualties.”
In the context of such a long and exhausting struggle, Fedorenko, the Ukrainian commander, said any new and motivated soldier poses a threat to Ukraine regardless of their country of origin.
“If we see a new soldier who is fresh, who has arms, who has a rifle, who can fight Ukrainian soldiers, we don’t see the color of his skin or his nationality,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where they came from. They came here to fight against Ukraine.” Inside Kursk, Ukrainian soldiers are trying to push back into positions they lost last month, despite the threat of North Korean reinforcements.
Valentyn Levada, 36, and Andrii Vavilov, 41, who work for a drone unit attached to the 82nd Brigade, were among the first soldiers to cross into the Kursk region in August.
They quickly established control of the territory, passing through a largely unfortified border to seize Russian positions and take unsuspecting conscripts as prisoners of war.
But when they left for a rotation back inside Ukraine at the end of September, they watched in disbelief as online maps showed how Russian forces were retaking territory they had just fought for. The troops sent in to relieve them, they said, had failed to hold the line.
Within two weeks of their departure from Kursk, their unit was abruptly sent back in to stabilize the situation, they said. The Russians “exploited this time when brigades were rotating,” Levada said.
Their second stint into Kursk was much more difficult than the first, they said. They were long past the element of surprise that helped make the August advance possible, and areas they had controlled that were once out of range of Russian weapons were vulnerable once again.
“We had to start from scratch,” Levada said. The Ukrainian troops’ primary fear, they said, is that the North Korean soldiers will free up Russian troops for new assaults. “We might engage with [North Koreans] directly if there’s a rapid breakthrough,” Levada said. “Taking them hostage, I assume, will be hard.”
Oleksandr, the soldier responsible for monitoring intelligence in Ukraine’s 82nd Brigade, said that despite the loss of some Ukrainian positions, Russian soldiers are still under immense pressure in Kursk, and in some cases severely struggling to resupply.
Ukrainian troops have established fire control over a key supply route to the town of Liubimovka, destroying dozens of Russian vehicles that attempt to deliver supplies, he said. Ukrainian control of the road has forced Russians into resupplying or evacuating the wounded by foot, demoralizing them on their own land.
“It’s really the road of death for them,” Oleksandr said. But the fight for Kursk remains intense, and at times downright terrifying for Ukrainians as well.
In a hospital in the Sumy region, men evacuated in recent days lay in beds with their legs and arms bandaged, describing hellish conditions inside Kursk.
The wounded included a group of soldiers from Ukraine’s 225th Assault Battalion, who said they had been drafted to serve this summer, sent abroad for training and then deployed to Kursk in recent days — their first time in active combat.
Pavlo, 39, said both of the commanders in their unit died almost immediately upon arrival. The rest of the men were then left to fend for themselves and try to organize their own evacuation as they came under relentless Russian artillery and drone attacks. “It’s hard to describe with words,” he said. “You wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy.”
The men spoke on the condition that only their first names be used, in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol.
All of the men appeared shell-shocked and in disbelief that they had survived. One, Taras, 27, was a bit scratched but was visibly stressed, his eyes bulging as he described how he and Pavlo had escaped from the trench together into an evacuation vehicle, which probably saved their lives.
He knew the other men in the group, suffering from broken limbs and shrapnel wounds, would soon leave Sumy for surgeries and rehabilitation elsewhere, but that he would probably be sent right back to the front.
When asked what they had done for work before they were mobilized, the men said they were all construction workers.
Taras was the last to answer.
“I was a welder,” he said, staring blankly across the room. “It was a beautiful job.”
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