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.
Troops that had never fought?
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 a mutual defense agreement in recent months, which entered 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, for its part, is 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 .
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