“Hundreds” of North Korean soldiers have been killed or injured in the fighting between them and the Ukrainian army in the Russian region of Kursk, a senior American military official said Tuesday.
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“Several hundred casualties, this is our latest estimate of North Korea’s losses,” said the official on condition of anonymity, specifying that this count includes “lightly wounded to those killed in combat”.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army, Oleksandr Syrsky, said that, “for three days the enemy has been carrying out intense offensive operations in the Kursk region, actively using units of the northern army -Korean”, adding that it had already “suffered heavy losses”.
Faced with the invasion of Moscow for almost three years, Ukraine launched a surprise offensive in the Russian region of Kursk at the beginning of August, the most important on Russian territory since the Second World War, and still controls a small part of it.
Several thousand North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia in recent weeks to support the Russian army, according to Westerners. For its part, the Kremlin has each time evaded questions on the subject, not wanting to confirm this information. Pyongyang has neither confirmed nor denied this unprecedented deployment.
These troops “had never fought before,” the American official said on Tuesday, judging that this could explain “why they suffered such losses against the Ukrainians. »
Russia and North Korea have signed in recent months a mutual defense agreement which came into force at the beginning of December according to Russian diplomacy, article 4 of which provides for “immediate military aid” in the event of armed aggression from third countries.
Washington is, for its part, the first military supporter of Kyiv since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022, and the administration of President Joe Biden, on the departure, has increased announcements in recent weeks of sending military equipment to Ukraine .
There is still $5.6 billion in funds available, but not all of it can be spent and sent to Ukraine before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, skeptical of the aid, a senior official said. American defense Tuesday.
These funds could, however, be transferred “so that they are available for the next administration,” added this official.
