Soldiers from an elite unit of the Korean People’s Army began arriving in the Kursk region on Wednesday to take part in the liberation of Russian territory from the Ukrainian armed forces. This was reported by The New York Times, citing a Ukrainian and two American officials.
‘Several thousand North Korean soldiers have arrived in Russia’s western Kursk region, where they are expected to take part in an upcoming counteroffensive aimed at dislodging Ukrainian troops who have occupied parts of the region since August, a Ukrainian and two American officials said Friday,’ the publication wrote.
The first North Korean units arrived in the Kursk region on Wednesday and have been joined by thousands more DPRK army troops every day since. Up to 5,000 North Korean troops are expected to be in the region by Monday, said a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the troop movements.
The troops, officials said, are part of an elite unit of the Korean People’s Army (KPA). They are being flown from Vladivostok on huge Il-76 transport planes to a military airfield in western Russia and then taken to the war zone, the Ukrainian official informed.
There have been mixed signals about whether additional North Korean troops will be sent to take part in the fighting in Ukraine; at the moment they are concentrated only in the Kursk region, he noted.
North Korean troops have not yet entered combat and it is not yet clear what role they will play, officials said. Regardless of their role, however, they said, any significant contingent of North Korean troops would allow Russia to keep more of its forces in eastern Ukraine to occupy as much territory as possible before winter sets in.