Clashes between Ukrainian troops and North Korean soldiers fighting for Moscow “open a new page of instability in the world”, Kyiv has warned, as its top general said its attack on Russia’s Kursk region had prevented Kremlin forces from occupying new territory in northern Ukraine.
Ukraine, the United States and South Korea say more than 10,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia under a deal that has raised alarm over how it will affect the Ukraine-Russia war and mystery over what the Kremlin has promised Pyongyang in return.
“The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world. Together with the world, we must do everything to make this Russian step to expand the war – to really escalate it – to make this step a failure. Both for them, and for North Korea,” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Without giving details, he thanked those who had reacted to the North Korean deployment “by preparing appropriate actions to support our defence here in Ukraine. Terror, unfortunately, can spread like a virus when it does not meet sufficient counteraction”.”
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Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov said this week that small-scale clashes between North Korean and Ukrainian troops had taken place in the Kursk region, and that he expected five 3,000-strong units of Pyongyang’s soldiers to be deployed alongside Russian forces.
Kyiv has repeatedly urged allies to provide it with more weapons and ammunition and lift restrictions that prevent its military from using western-supplied missiles to strike army and air bases, weapons stores and other military targets deeper inside Russia.
Ukraine has developed long-range drones since Moscow launched its full invasion in February 2022, and sources in Kyiv intelligence services told Kyiv media on Wednesday that one such drone had for the first time hit a military port in Russia’s Dagestan region on the Caspian Sea coast, some 1,500 km from Ukraine.
Russian officials said air defence units had shot down at least one drone. It is not clear if the attack did any damage but several videos posted online showed a large drone flying over the town of Kaspiysk followed by an explosion at its port.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Wednesday that the country’s troops had killed, injured or captured more than 20,000 Russian soldiers and destroyed more than 1,100 pieces of enemy weaponry, including 54 tanks, since occupying a swathe of the Kursk region in August.
He said the surprise operation, in which Ukraine seized more than 1,000sq km of Russian territory, had thwarted Moscow’s plans to create a “buffer zone” in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, which borders Kursk. The numbers and alleged plans cited by Gen Syrskyi could not be verified.
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