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North Korean casualties surpass 6,000 in Ukraine war, UK intelligence says
The figure represents more than half of the North Korean troops believed to have been initially deployed to Russia’s Kursk region
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More than 6,000 North Korean soldiers are believed to have been injured or killed while fighting in Russia’s Kursk region in support of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, according to estimates by British intelligence.
The number amounts to more than half of the 11,000 North Korean troops thought to have been initially deployed to the Kursk region, the UK defence ministry said in a post on social media on Sunday.
The estimates underline North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s role as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key ally in a war now in its fourth year.
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“Significant DPRK casualty rates have almost certainly been sustained primarily through large, highly attritional dismounted assaults,” the UK defence ministry’s statement said. DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. No evidence was provided to substantiate the assessment.
The figures could not be independently verified. Neither Russia nor Ukraine provides official figures for the number of combat casualties. North Korea acknowledged for the first time in April that it deployed troops to support Russia but did not confirm the number of soldiers dispatched or the level of casualties.
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