the essential
Enlisted by Russia in October, the North Korean soldiers deployed in Ukraine would be considered “cannon fodder” by their Russian allies, according to their Ukrainian opponents. The Russian forces would even try to conceal the identity of these soldiers who fell on the front, after their death. La Dépêche du Midi distinguishes the true from the false.
The images circulated widely on social networks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even relayed them on X. We see Russian soldiers, filmed from a Ukrainian drone, burning the faces of soldiers who died at the front. “The North Koreans have no reason to fight and die for Putin. And even if they do, Russia only has humiliation in store for them,” the Ukrainian president commented on December 16.
Even after years of war, when we thought the Russians could not get any more cynical, we see something even worse.
Russia not only sends the North Korean troops to storm Ukrainian positions, but also tries to conceal losses of these people.
They tried to hide the presence of… pic.twitter.com/KYyGF1rxP8
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Volodymyr Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1868777841917059313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
According to him, this would prove that “Russia is not only sending North Korean troops to storm Ukrainian positions, but is also trying to cover up the losses of these troops.” After these soldiers' stories of debacle, this video sows confusion about the way the Russian army treats its allies on the front.
A South Korean MP has, in fact, declared that at least 100 North Korean soldiers were killed and that 1,000 others were injured, due, according to him, to their lack of experience. Little trained in drone combat, they would be sent to the front line as “cannon fodder”.
Also read:
War in Ukraine: “At least 30 North Korean soldiers were killed or injured” in fighting on Russian soil, according to kyiv
Aeronautical and military expert Xavier Tytelman even told 20 minutes that with “no artillery preparation, no armored vehicles or vehicles to accompany the soldiers, no hovering bombs to weaken the Ukrainian defenses, no smoke bombs…”, the Ukrainians could carry out “horrible pigeon shooting” against these North Korean soldiers, from the air.
Propaganda tool
And Russia doesn't seem very comfortable with this if we are to believe the famous videos showing soldiers literally burning the faces of dead soldiers to make identification impossible. TF1 tried to authenticate these videos, they seem reliable, and would have been taken in the Kursk region, where the Ukrainian army made an incursion in August. However, according to their verification service, it would be difficult to ensure with certainty that the soldiers with the burned faces are all North Korean.
The particularly shocking image is in any case a propaganda tool that Ukraine does not hesitate to use to show how Vladimir Putin's allies are treated by the Russian president, on the ground of the war in Ukraine.
