TAIPEI, Taiwan – Russian and North Korean forces “lost up to a battalion of infantry” in two days of battles near the village of Makhnovka in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, estimating total North Korean casualties at about 3,800.
Up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia to support its war efforts against Ukraine in Kursk, Ukraine and the U.S. say, but neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have acknowledged their deployment.
“In battles today and yesterday near just one village – Makhnovka in the Kursk region – the Russian army lost up to a battalion of infantry, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers. And that’s tangible,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday.
The size of a battalion can vary from a few hundred soldiers to up to about 1,000.
Zelenskyy did not specify if he meant the soldiers “lost” in the fighting at the village were killed or killed and wounded but he estimated that 3,800 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in the fighting in Kursk.
“North Korea. Just look at this example, 12,000 have arrived. Today 3,800 killed or wounded. They can bring more, 30-40 thousand, or maybe 500. They can bring many people. Why? Because they have order, autocracy and everything,” he said in an interview with American podcaster Lex Fridman on Sunday.
Ukraine previously reported more than 3,000 casualties among the North Korean while South Korea estimates at least 1,100 North Koreans have been killed or wounded.
“We do not want any war. We want to stop the Russians. And they invite ... North Korean soldiers. Invited. Their faces are burned. They themselves burn their faces. Those who cannot escape, injured or killed,” the Ukrainian president added.
Zelenskyy was referring to his previous assertion that Russian forces were burning the faces of North Korean soldiers killed in assaults on Ukrainian positions to conceal their identities and keep secret their deployment to help Russia in its war.
He cited a video as evidence but Radio Free Asia has not been able to independently verify the clip.
Zelenskyy’s remarks came after reports that a senior North Korean military officer had been sent to Kursk to investigate the cause of the massive loss of troops.
The high-ranking officer’s visit resulted in a brief suspension of the North Koreans’ participation in combat but it later resumed, Ukraine’s Evocation reported on Thursday.
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Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, or DIU, said the morale of North Koreans in Kursk was declining.
“The soldiers’ morale is falling. And they are receiving constant propaganda from the Russian army with the message that the North Korean army’s participation in the war with Ukraine is ‘very important’,” the DIU said on its official Telegram channel.
“Junior Russian commanders are deliberately underreporting casualty figures to their superiors,” it added.
A Ukrainian special operations sergeant told RFA on Dec. 27 that North Korean soldiers were fighting with outdated weapons, no food and poor medical kits.
“They have no military food in their bags. They have some grenades but it’s not even the Soviet type,” said Mykhailo Makaruk of the 8th Special Operations Regiment. “It’s bullshit grenades. And they have lower level military medicine kits.”
There have been no signs of an additional deployment of soldiers from North Korea, despite the recent high casualty numbers, the Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington last week.
“Can’t say that we’re seeing more being sent, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t send more in the future,” she said.
Edited by RFA Staff.