North Korean forces are experiencing mass casualties on the front lines of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with a thousand of their troops killed or wounded in the last week alone in the Kursk region of Russia, White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters yesterday.
The number far exceeds the figure US officials have previously provided.
“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses,” Kirby said, describing the North Korean troops’ offensive as “massed, dismounted assaults.”
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Russia’s UN mission declined to comment.
Kirby said President Joe Biden would likely approve another security assistance package for Ukraine in coming days. Earlier this week, Biden condemned Russia’s Christmas Day attacks on Ukraine’s energy system and some of its cities and asked the Defense Department to continue its surge of weapons to Ukraine. On December 17, a US military official said North Korea had suffered several hundred casualties while fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region.
Asked about what ranks the North Korean casualties included, the military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was from lower-level troops to “very near to the top.”
North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they are fighting alongside, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Russian troops were sending the North Koreans into battle with minimal protection and that North Koreans were taking extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner.
“Their losses are significant, very significant. We see that neither the Russian military nor their North Korean overseers have any interest in ensuring the survival of these North Koreans,” he said. Earlier this week, Zelenskiy said more than 3,000 North Koreans had been killed or wounded.
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