Putin sends thousands of North Koreans to Kursk urgently

The Kremlin sends North Korean special forces to the Kursk region to confront kyiv’s most experienced units. The objective? Prepare for negotiations.

Ivan Ruslyannikov / ch media

Vladimir Putin gathers nearly 50,000 Russian and North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region in order to drive out the Ukrainian army. As the “New York Times” reports, the North Koreans are already trained and equipped with light weapons.

However, it appears that Kim Jong-un’s soldiers did not take heavy equipment with them.

In recent weeks, intelligence services in several countries have claimed that Kim Jong-un had sent special units to Russia. In return, Moscow will provide Pyongyang with nearly 700,000 tonnes of rice, thus alleviating, at least to some extent, the problem of food shortage in North Korea. As a bonus, each North Korean soldier who fights for Russia receives a monthly salary of around $2,000.

Act before Trump comes to power

The approximately 12,000 North Korean men are therefore preparing to be transported by military plane to the Kursk region, still occupied by Ukrainian special forces. Transport by land would take more than a month and Putin is in a hurry, according to military analyst Ruslan Leviev.

The founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team investigative group explains that the head of the Kremlin “wants to drive Ukrainians out of the Kursk region before Donald Trump takes office as President of the United States on January 20.

Indeed, for the Ukrainians, it is important to maintain control over the Kursk region in order to be in a position of strength during the rapid negotiations promised by the future American president, explains the military analyst.

To conduct negotiations, it is not very important to know, for example, who controls the small town of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, but the presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia, in the Kursk region, puts Putin personally under pressure.

The head of the Kremlin is well aware of the situation. This is why he is preparing to send North Korean special forces to attack.

Soldiers in disguise

Despite everything, the Kremlin strives to remain discreet about the deployment of North Korean soldiers. They were given fake ID cards to pass themselves off as residents of the Yakutia and Buryatia regions, who resemble North Koreans. South Korean intelligence, however, identified the camouflaged North Koreans using facial recognition technology. For example, one of the North Korean soldiers on the Russian-Ukrainian front is a rocket technician and accompanied Kim Jong Un when he visited a tactical missile factory in August 2023.

Ruslan Leviev also recalls that North Korea sent ballistic missiles and artillery munitions to Russia before sending its assault troops.

According to him, the 50,000 troops that Russia plans to deploy in the Kursk region will not be enough:

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