North Korean troops ‘withdrawn’ from Kursk front line: Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine believes North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russia´s army on the Kursk front line have been “withdrawn” after suffering heavy losses, a military spokesman told AFP on Friday.

Western, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies say Pyongyang deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia´s forces fighting in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock cross-border offensive in August.

Kyiv captured dozens of border settlements in the operation -- the first time a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since the Second World War -- in an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin.

The North Korean deployment -- never officially confirmed by Moscow or Pyongyang -- was supposed to reinforce Russia´s army and help them expel Ukraine´s troops. But nearly six months on, Ukraine still holds on to swathes of Russian territory, something President Volodymyr Zelensky sees as a key bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Moscow.

“Over the past three weeks, we have not seen or detected any activity or military clashes with the North Koreans,” Oleksandr Kindratenko, spokesman for the Special Operations Forces, told AFP.

“We believe that they have been withdrawn because of the heavy losses that were inflicted,” he added. Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers deployed to the Kursk region.

Zelensky has published footage of interrogations with what he said were North Korean prisoners of war captured by his army on the Kursk front. Ukrainian officials have said that wounded North Korean troops were blowing themselves up with grenades rather than being taken alive.

Asked earlier on Friday about reports the North Korean soldiers had been withdrawn, the Kremlin declined to comment. “There are a lot of different arguments out there, both right and wrong,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“It´s not worth commenting on every time,” he added. Kyiv and the West had decried their deployment as a major escalation in the three-year conflict. Ukraine says around 2,000 Russian civilians live in areas under its occupation, mostly cut off from contact with relatives on the other side of the new front line.

Discontent has been growing in the Russian border region at the failure of the local authorities to secure their return to Moscow-controlled territory or provide updates on their status. Despite Ukraine´s hold on part of the Kursk region, Russia has been advancing elsewhere across the 1,000-kms front.

Moscow´s army on Friday said it had captured another village, Novovasylivka, in eastern Ukraine, where its forces are advancing on a key logistics hub and a road that is crucial for military supplies.

Novovasylivka is close to the key hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, and to the internal border with Ukraine´s Dnipropetrovsk region, which so far has been spared ground combat. Russia in 2022 said it was annexing the Donetsk region -- despite not having it under full control -- but has not publicly made territorial claims on Dnipropetrovsk.