Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked North Korean troops for fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, after North Korea confirmed the deployment for the first time.
In a statement yesterday from the Kremlin, Putin hailed the heroism and dedication of the North Korean fighters, who he said “shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters, defended our Motherland as their own”.
Russia last Saturday said its troops have fully reclaimed the Kursk region that Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise incursion last year.
Ukrainian officials denied the claim.
US, South Korean and Ukraine intelligence officials have said North Korea dispatched 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last fall in its first participation in a major armed conflict since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
But North Korea had not confirmed or denied its reported troop deployments to Russia until yesterday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un decided to send the combat troops to Russia under a mutual defence treaty he and Putin signed in June 2024, the North’s Central Military Commission said in a statement carried by state media.
The treaty – considered the two countries’ biggest defence agreement since the end of the Cold War – requires both nations to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.
The statement cited Kim as saying the deployment was meant to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces”.
“They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland,” Kim said.
The North Korean statement did not say how many troops North Korea eventually sent and how many of them had died.
But in March, South Korea’s military said that around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Russia-Ukraine war fronts.
The South Korean military also assessed at the time that North Korea sent about 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry yesterday urged North Korea to withdraw its troops from Russia immediately, saying the North’s support of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine poses a grave provocation to international security.
Spokesperson Koo Byoung-sam also called the North’s troops’ deployment “an act against humanity” that has sacrificed young North Korean soldiers for their government.
In a Kremlin meeting last Saturday, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff for Russia’s armed forces, informed Putin of Russia’s regaining of the Kursk region.
Gerasimov also confirmed that North Korean soldiers fought alongside Russia to repel Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region and “demonstrated high professionalism, showed fortitude, courage and heroism in battle”. — AP
