A thousand North Korean troops who have been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia have been killed in Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine, officials have said.
Western officials have told the BBC that 36 per cent of North Korean forces fighting in Russia had been killed, injured or captured by mid-January.
Around 11,000 North Korean troops were sent to Russia in an attempt to recapture parts of the Kursk region which were seized by Ukrainian soldiers in a surprise attack last summer.
But North Korea has suffered huge losses with around 4,000 killed or wounded in Kursk since they are believed to have joined the conflict in early December.
Last month Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war.
Earlier, South Korea’s military said North Korea may be preparing to send more troops and weapons, including “kamikaze” drones, to Russia to support Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Pyongyang has already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers to Russia, according to Seoul’s JCS.
It highlighted signs that North Korea has been preparing to produce more “kamikaze” drones to be shipped to Russia after leader Kim Jong Un guided a test last month.
“Suicide drones are one of the tasks that Kim Jong Un has focused on,” a JCS official said, adding that the North had expressed its intention to give them to Russia.
Such drones have been widely used in the Ukraine war, and Kim ordered a mass production of the aerial weapons and an update of military theory and education, citing intensifying global competition, state media reported.
Putin is believed to have stepped up Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine in a bid to grab as much land as possible, even if it means suffering heavy losses, before Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday, as he claimed he could end the war in the day.
