Crack Ukrainian troops have already wiped out at least 40 “elite” North Korean soldiers deployed by Vladimir Putin to regain his invaded Kursk territory, according to reports.
It comes just days after thousands of soldiers from Pyongyang were sent deep inside Russia to help Moscow win its bloody war against Ukraine. The tubby North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has now committed to helping the desperate Putin, who has been losing a record number of his own troops.
However, a severely wounded North Korean soldier being treated in a field hospital claimed that the Ukrainians had “covered us in artillery and drones” during their first engagement near the village of Lyubimovka. “There were forty of us, but all are dead,” he said, revealing that his brothers Kim and Minho had been killed.
The soldier, who survived by hiding under headless bodies, alleged that the North Koreans were “betrayed” and “sent on an assault in the Kursk region” despite not being provided with proper intelligence, ammunition or weapons by the Russians. “The Russians did not provide us with anything. They threw us into an assault without prior intelligence, without ammunition, without normal weapons,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has stated that more North Korean troops, dressed in Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, are headed towards the Ukrainian border, describing the move as “dangerous and destabilizing.” However, Kyiv believes most of the North Koreans deployed will attempt to desert and defect.
“If you were a North Korean, wouldn’t you do the same?” said a senior Ukrainian commander, who dismissed the North Korean troops as not being a “credible force.” The official added that he couldn’t “think of anyone in the [Ukrainian military] that would worry about finding themselves on the zero line facing Kim Jong-Un’s troops.”
The reports of North Korean casualties and attempted desertions come as Ukrainian forces are thought to be in control of more than a thousand square kilometers of sovereign Russian territory in the Kursk region, marking the first-ever invasion on Russian soil since World War Two. The decimation of the North Korean contingent is an early setback for Putin’s efforts to bolster his depleted ranks with foreign fighters.
