Roving Periscope: N. Korea admits sending soldiers to Russia to fight in Ukraine
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has, for the first time, confirmed that he sent troops to help Russia ‘annihilate’ Ukrainian forces under a military pact he signed with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in June 2024, the media reported on Monday.
The North Korean forces contributed to taking back Russian territory held by Ukraine’s military in the Kursk region, he said.
In a statement to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday, the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party said the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had sent troops into combat alongside Russian forces as part of a mutual defence treaty between Moscow and Pyongyang.
The KCNA quoted Kim as saying that soldiers were deployed to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces”.
“They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland,” the media outlet quoted Kim as saying.
North Korea “regards it as an honour to have an alliance with such a powerful state as the Russian Federation”, KCNA said.
Following Pyongyang’s confirmation, President Putin expressed his personal gratitude and appreciation to Kim, saying that his country’s “Korean friends” had acted out of “a sense of solidarity, justice and genuine comradeship”.
His spokesman later said that Russia stands ready to provide military assistance to North Korea.
“We have an agreement in force, and under this agreement the parties, in fact, have undertaken to provide immediate assistance to each other if necessary,” Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Kim said that a monument would be raised soon in his capital Pyongyang to honour those who had fought against Ukraine.
“Flowers praying for immortality will be placed before the tombstones of the fallen soldiers, effectively acknowledging troops killed in combat,” Kim said according to South Korea’s state news agency Yonhap.
Ukrainian officials said earlier this year that some 14,000 North Koreans were deployed against its forces, including 3,000 reinforcements sent to replace the Nortj Koreans’ early battlefield losses.
Lacking armoured vehicles and unfamiliar with drone warfare, the North Koreans had taken heavy casualties early on in fighting but adapted quickly, according to reports, and later contributed to reclaiming Russia’s Kursk region from ‘occupying’ Ukrainian forces.
Estimates of the casualty rate among North Korean forces fighting for Russia have varied widely.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in January that about 300 North Korean soldiers were killed in combat and another 2,700 had been injured.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 4,000, while the United States estimated a lower figure of about 1,200 casualties.
North Korea’s statement follows Russia’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, on Saturday hailing the “heroism” of the North Korean soldiers, who he said “provided significant assistance in defeating the group of Ukrainian armed forces”, while reporting to Putin that Kursk had been regained from Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s General Staff quickly countered, saying that its defensive operation in certain areas in Kursk was continuing.
The US State Department said on Sunday evening that North Korea and other “third countries” had “perpetuated” Russia’s war on Ukraine and that it must end, as should Moscow’s support for Pyongyang.
