Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday February 7 that North Korean soldiers were fighting again alongside the Kremlin in the Russian border region of Koursk partly occupied by Ukraine, kyiv having previously announced that the soldiers of the Pyongyang had been removed because heavy losses.
“There have been new assaults in the operation areas of (the region of) Koursk, the Russian army and North Korean soldiers were again involved,” said the Ukrainian president in his daily speech. He assured that a “significant number” of Russian and North Korean soldiers had been “destroyed”.
On January 31, kyiv said that the North Korean soldiers deployed in this area had been “withdrawn” due to losses. On February 4, the South Korean intelligence services also indicated that no soldier sent by Pyongyang in Russia had been “engaged in fights” since mid-January. “One of the reasons could be the high number of victims, but the exact details are still being studied,” added Seoul in a statement.
Neither Russia nor North Korea confirmed the presence of this contingent alongside the Russian army. In December, Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or injured” since their commitment alongside Moscow. Losses that Seoul figures around 1,100.
More than six months of fighting in the Koursk region
The fighting in the Koursk region has been raging for more than six months, the Ukrainian army having launched there on August 6, 2024 a surprise offensive which allowed it to seize parts of Russian territory. If Russian forces have since taken over most of these territories, they still fail to repel Ukrainian troops beyond the border, despite the deployment, according to kyiv and its Western allies, of North Korean soldiers in support . Volodymyr Zelensky maintained once again on Friday that the operation in the Koursk region made it possible to fix “60,000 Russian soldiers” and relieve other fronts.
However, this offensive has failed to contain the progress of the Kremlin forces in eastern Ukraine, where they have been progressing for more than a year against less numerous and lacking Ukrainian forces. Russia claimed on Friday, after months of fighting, the taking of the mining city of Totretsk, in the Donetsk region, a conquest which, if it were confirmed, would be of importance for the Russian troops.