Ukraina - Nord Korea planlegger å sende flere tropper - Stars & Stripes

 

North Korea, facing huge losses, plans more troop deployments to Russia

By 

DAVID CHOI

STARS AND STRIPES • January 24, 2025

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North Korean troops train at an undisclosed military base, March 6, 2024, in this image from the state-run Korean Central News Agency. (KCNA)

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — North Korea may be accelerating plans to send more troops to replace frontline casualties incurred fighting Ukraine on behalf of Russia.

Pyongyang plans to send Moscow an unspecified number of troops to replace those killed, wounded or imprisoned, according to a Friday report from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The North Korean reinforcements are expected to arrive within two months, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday that cited an unnamed U.S. defense official.

Roughly 12,000 North Koreans may have deployed to Russia as early as October to fight in the nearly 2-year conflict, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have said.

Of those, around 3,000 were killed or wounded in fighting in Russia’s western front, South Korean lawmakers Lee Seong-kweun and Park Sun-won, citing a closed-door National Intelligence Service briefing, told reporters earlier this month.

News reports indicate the North Koreans are fighting in Kursk, a region of Russia where Ukrainian forces seized territory last summer.

Last month, Ukraine released photos of military identification cards and letters written in Korean that it said belonged to North Korean soldiers. It also released several videos of their interrogation of two North Korean troops captured Jan. 3 during fighting in western Kursk.

One of the North Koreans said he and about 100 other troops arrived in Russia by commercial ferry, not a military transport, and that he did not know who they would be fighting against, according to an interrogation video posted Monday on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s account on social platform X.

“Intelligence data on the movement of such troops to Russian territory, their training and complete information isolation have been confirmed by the prisoners,” the post said. “All the facts about North Korea’s involvement in this war will be established.”