North Korea becoming more involved. I can’t see this ending well… It makes me wonder where the 38th parallel lies.
North Korea Wading Deeper Into Russia’s War Against Ukraine
Ukraine Situation Report: North Korea is sending troops to assist Russia with attacks on Ukrainian cities while Ukraine strikes back against weapons storage areas.
HOWARD ALTMAN
POSTED ON OCT 10, 2024 4:22 PM EDT
North Korea appears to be getting more deeply involved in the Ukraine war, going beyond supplying Russia with munitions. Its military engineers “have been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles” it provided to Russia, The Guardian reported, citing senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul.
Dozens of North Koreans are behind Russian lines, “in teams that support launcher systems for KN-23 short-range[ ballistic] missiles,” a source in Ukraine told the publication. As we reported earlier this year, North Korea began supplying Russia with those missiles, also known as Hwasong-11s, but about half were defective, according to an analysis from Ukrainian state prosecutors.
South Korea’s Defense Minister, Kim Yong-hyun, told members of parliament in Seoul this week that it was “highly likely” that North Korean officers had been deployed to fight alongside Russians, and as we previously reported, several had died last week in an attack on a Russian base in the Donetsk region. He did not give further details.
The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, concurred. In a post on Telegram, he said that some North Koreans had been killed in Ukraine. His organization is part of the National Security and Defense Council.
All this comes in the wake of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin where the two men bolstered their deepening ties with a secret arms deal. It was reported that, among other things, it called for Pyongyang to send construction and engineering forces to Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine for rebuilding work. There was no indication of how many personnel would be involved or the exact nature of their work.
The increasing evidence of North Korean troops in Ukraine marks a big escalation. Foreigners have fought as mercenaries for Russia, “but if North Koreans are on the ground it would mark the first time a foreign government has sent troops in uniform to support Moscow’s war,” the Guardian noted
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Aside from helping Russia, North Korea benefits from this relationship by testing its weaponry and giving its troops live combat experience.
“For North Korea, which has supplied Russia with many shells and missiles, it’s crucial to learn how to handle different weapons and gain real-world combat experience,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, the Guardian reported. “This might even be a driving factor behind sending North Korean soldiers – to provide them with diverse experiences and wartime training.”
In addition to troops, Pyongyang has given Moscow about three million artillery shells a year, about half of what Russian forces are using in Ukraine, according to Western intelligence, The Times of London reported.
“Although many of the shells are believed to be faulty, the sheer quantity has allowed Russia to make steady gains, most recently capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar.
Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), warned in September that shipments of North Korean shells were tilting the war in Russia’s favor.
“Our biggest problem from all these allies of Russia is from North Korea. Because with the volume of military products that they supply, they actually affect the intensity of the fighting,” he said.
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In addition to killing the North Korean officers, Ukraine has also attacked Russian facilities storing North Korean arms.
On Wednesday the Ukrainian military said it destroyed North Korean ammunition in a strike on a depot in the town of Karachev, in Russia’s Bryansk region, 60 miles from the Ukrainian border, Kovalenko said on Telegram. The warehouse belonged to the 67th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry.
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Just how deeply North Korea continues to wade into the war in Ukraine remains to be seen. However it appears to be clearly escalating its role.
The Latest
On the battlefield, Ukraine is “mounting a strong defense” against Russia, with Russia’s Kursk region and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine seeing the heaviest fighting, a senior U.S. military official told reporters, including from The War Zone, on Wednesday.
“Up in Kursk, there have been some limited counterattacks by the Russians, but really there are no meaningful gains or exchanges of territory in the last several weeks, and then down in Donetsk, while the Russians did make some advances earlier in the summer, those advances have slowed compared to that time period.”
Since February 2022, Ukraine “has inflicted more than 600,000 casualties on Russian forces,” a senior U.S. defense official said at the same press briefing. “In September of this year, Russia, Russian forces sustained more casualties in terms of both killed and wounded in action than in any other month of the war.”
The bulk of the Russian casualties last month came during attacks on Pokrovsk and Vuhledar in Donetsk, the senior military official said, adding that Ukraine is taking a “defense in depth” approach, trading territory for time with an eye toward a new offensive next year.
“My assessment is that the Ukrainians will be able to maintain their position and Kursk for some amount of time here into the future, I think several months and potentially beyond,” tne senior military official posited.
There was little territory exchanged over the past few days according to the latest assessment from the Insitute for the Study of War (ISW).
- Kursk: Ukrainian and Russian forces “continued assaults in Glushkovsky Raion west of the main Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast on October 7, 8, and 9 but did not make any confirmed advances,” ISW reported.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces recently advanced within Vovchansk amid continued offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast on October 7, 8, and 9. “Geolocated footage published on October 7 showing a Russian soldier raising a Russian flag in a building at the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant indicates that Russian forces likely recaptured the plant.”
- Luhansk: Russian forces recently advanced northwest of Kreminna amid continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 8 and 9.
- Donetsk: Russian forces recently advanced near Siversk, southern Toretsk, southwest of Donetsk City and southeast of Pokrosk amid continued Russian offensive operations. Russian forces continued offensive operations near Chasiv Yar on October 7, 8, and 9, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces recently advanced during a counterattack east of Pokrovsk.
- Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces “recently marginally advanced south of Stepnohirsk amid continued assaults in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 7, 8, and 9,” ISW reported. “Geolocated footage published on October 8 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced in southwestern Kamyanske (south of Stepnohirsk).”
- Kherson: Russian forces continued assaults in the Kherson direction on October 7, 8, and 9, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this direction.
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Bad planning remains a huge problem for Ukrainian troops, a commander of the 28th Mechanized Brigade’s Kurt and Company unit complained.
“The biggest mistakes happen during rotations or taking new positions. Some commanders don’t plan properly, and bringing a unit to a new position is a major operation,” the commander told the RBC-Ukraine news outlet. “My unit is small, but I always personally scout a new position first. I take one soldier from the group that will move there, and we plan everything carefully.”
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Ukrainian defense forces attacked a Shahed drone storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region on Wednesday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said on Facebook.
The attack was carried out by a “strike group of forces and means of the Military-Maritime Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in interaction with units of the Security Service of Ukraine,” the General Staff stated.
“According to available information, about 400 strike drones were stored there,” the statement read. “According to the results of objective control, an accurate hit on the target was recorded. A secondary detonation was observed on the territory of the object.”
The destruction of this storage base “will significantly reduce the opportunity of Russian occupiers to terrorize civilian residents of Ukrainian cities and villages,’ the General Staff added.
The War Zone cannot independently verify this claim.
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