CNN
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North Korean troopers combating for Russia got faux navy paperwork with Russian names and birthplaces, the Ukrainian navy mentioned, amid claims from Kyiv that Russia is making an attempt to hide the presence of international fighters on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s particular operations forces mentioned in a press release Sunday they’d killed three North Korean troopers in Russia’s western Kursk area and seized their paperwork.
Their navy identification paperwork “lack all of the stamps and photographs, the patronymic names are given within the Russian method, and the hometown is signed because the Republic of Tuva,” the assertion mentioned, referring to a Russian area in southern Siberia bordering Mongolia.
But the signatures on the paperwork are in Korean, which “signifies the actual origin of those troopers,” the assertion added.
“This case as soon as once more confirms that Russia is resorting to any means to cover its losses on the battlefield and conceal international presence,” the assertion mentioned.
US, Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence estimates put the variety of North Korean troopers in Russia between 11,000 to 12,000, a few of whom have already engaged in fight operations alongside tens of 1000’s of Russian forces to help in recovering elements of Kursk taken in a Ukrainian offensive in August.
Video seems to point out North Korean troopers receiving uniforms and tools at Russian coaching base
The North Korean troops seem to have suffered heavy losses within the area, in line with US and Ukrainian officers, as officers in Kyiv accuse Russia of making an attempt to cowl up their involvement.
A senior US official mentioned North Korea has seen “a number of hundred” casualties — each killed and wounded — in Kursk since October. A South Korean lawmaker mentioned about 100 North Korean troopers are believed to have been killed and virtually 1,000 injured since being deployed to Kursk, in line with the nation’s intelligence company.
Ukraine’s particular forces mentioned on December 17 that, in simply three days, 50 North Korean troopers have been killed and 47 injured whereas combating alongside Russian troops in Kursk.
One Ukrainian unit reported that North Koreans – sporting totally different uniforms from the Russians – had launched infantry assaults utilizing the “similar ways as 70 years in the past,” in an obvious reference to the Korean War, the place waves of infantry have been used.
Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have ever formally acknowledged the presence of North Korean troops in Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has mentioned Russia is trying to hide the losses of North Korean troops on the battlefield, resorting to excessive ways to disguise the id of North Korean troopers killed in fight.
“Russians are attempting… to actually burn the faces of North Korean troopers killed in battle,” Zelensky mentioned in a press release on X on December 17, alongside a video purportedly displaying Russian troopers setting hearth to the our bodies of North Korean troopers.
Russian troopers heard complaining about North Korean troopers in intercepted audio
Separately, a Ukrainian frontline drone unit posted video on December 15 purporting to point out the our bodies of greater than 20 North Korean troopers lined up in an icy discipline. The high quality of the video was not ok to confirm their id.
Lt. Andriі Kovalenko, an official in Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, mentioned the Ukrainian unit captured the footage earlier than Russia was in a position to evacuate the our bodies.
“They attempt to conceal the involvement of North Koreans in particular operations as a lot as doable. Therefore, they often put these our bodies in a row, then tracked automobiles arrive and take the our bodies away,” Kovalenko informed Ukrainian state information company Ukrinform.
