How North Korean troops could help Russia reclaim Kursk in imminent strike
North Korean fighters could be used on the front line of a Russian counter-offensive, according to security experts, as reports suggest Moscow could launch a major attack to reclaim the Kursk region from Ukrainian troops in the coming days.
Vladimir Putin has reportedly deployed 50,000 Russian and North Korean troops to recapture the region invaded by Ukraine in August. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said last week that about 11,000 North Korean soldiers are in Kursk.
Nato believes Putin is hoping to win back territory lost to Ukraine before Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, to gain leverage in the event the US president-elect tries to bring Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table.
Security experts say the arrival of North Korean troops is a boost to the Russian forces, who have already taken back about half of seized territory in Kursk.
Despite their inexperience on the battleground, analysts say North Korean soldiers are better disciplined and organised than their Russian counterparts.
“Thousands of additional infantry can make a difference in Kursk,” Rob Lee, a Russian military specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The New York Times.
“These soldiers are younger and in better physical shape than many Russian contract soldiers.”
North Korea’s elite 11th corp infantry – also known as the “Storm Corps” and said to be the best trained in the country – have been folded in to Russia’s elite VDV airborne forces and naval infantry units, said Alexander Lord, a defence analyst at Sibylline.
“This is significant as VDV airborne units are well-equipped and heralded as elite units within the Russian military, which will give North Korean troops access to equipment [and] ammunition, and means they won’t just be used as cannon fodder,” Lord told i.
“They could still be utilised in frontal assaults, and could take casualties, with North Korean troops acting as a second line of assault across the front line.”
The troops are wearing Russian uniforms and have been equipped by Moscow, but they will probably fight in their own discrete units, US defence officials said.
Ukraine has claimed that some North Korean troops were handed out fake ID cards allegedly identifying them as citizens of various republics of Siberia to hide their identity.
Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, said on Thursday that the US “fully expect” North Korean soldiers to be engaged in combat, while Ukraine claims its soldiers have already fought troops sent by Pyongyang.
In an interview with South Korean broadcaster KBS, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov said a “small group” of North Korean soldiers were attacked.
American officials said Russia has been training the North Koreans in artillery fire, basic infantry tactics and, critically, trench clearing.
Ukrainian officials added that Moscow had supplied the North Korean forces with machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Despite the often-fiery rhetoric from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the country has not engaged in an all-out war since the Korean War in the 1950s.
Lord said this will present North Koreans with a “unique opportunity to learn from Russia” as the “troops have had limited confrontation, and have not been exposed to large-scale modern warfare”.
US officials are not sure what constraints the North Korean government has put on the use of its forces. However, analysts say North Korean engineers are already in Russia-controlled Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a signal that Pyongyang could be prepared to allow North Korean troops to penetrate deeper into Ukrainian territory.
Trump regularly said in his election campaign that he could end the Ukraine war “in a day” but has not offered details on how he would do that, while vice president-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.
