In my last report on North Korea, I noted that it destroyed roads and rail lines to South Korea in response to drone-dropped propaganda leaflets.
The rogue nation is also threatening to attack the US and South Korea with nuclear weapons.
Now Ukraine is reporting North Korean soldiers are now aiding Russia in the regional war.
The Ukrainian government says its military intelligence has evidence that North Korea isn’t just sending weapons to assist Russia in the war on Ukraine. Pyongyang may also be sending soldiers.“This is no longer just about transferring weapons,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address over the weekend. “It’s about actually transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.”Andriy Kovalenko, who leads the center for countering disinformation on Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council, told NPR that he was briefed on the issue and said Russia is training North Korean military personnel on Russian territory.“The enemy’s plans are to use [the North Korean presence] to reinforce conscripts and border guards in the border regions of Russia,” he said. “But it’s too early to say whether they will be deployed directly on the territory of Ukraine.”
A Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC that Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans. The numbers and deployment. While the actual number has been hard to substantiate, there has been a trend of warming relations between the two countries.
There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.
Yet, retaining the North Korean soldiers during the deployment may prove challenging.
Some 18 North Korean soldiers are believed to have deserted the Russian frontline, with Kremlin fighters reportedly searching for them.The troops were deployed in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk oblasts, about four miles from the border with Ukraine, when they deserted, the public broadcasting company of Ukraine, Suspilne, reported.Intelligence officials cited by the broadcaster said the Russian military is searching for the North Korean soldiers, while commanders are trying to conceal the desertion from their higher-ups….North Korean soldiers were set to form a “special Buryat battalion,” named after the Mongolic ethnic group indigenous to the region spanning Siberia as well as northern Mongolia and China, sources quoted by LIGA said.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY