Russian and North Korean Troops Shrink Ukraine’s Gains in Kursk

Moscow is taking territory back from Ukrainian forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, according to new assessments, as the U.S. says it expects North Korean reinforcements to head for front-line clashes soon.

Moscow’s troops “recently advanced” in the area of Kursk controlled by Ukrainian soldiers, U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday.

Kyiv launched a surprise incursion into Kursk in early August, and Russia has struggled to peel back Ukraine’s most significant advance into Russian territory since the start of full-scale war in February 2022, and the first ground attacks by another country on Russian soil since World War II.

Ukraine’s efforts focused on the area around the town of Sudzha, which Kyiv claimed just over a week after the incursion got underway, and toward Korenevo, a town to the northwest. Russia has retaken chunks of territory close to Korenevo, with Ukraine still holding Sudzha.

Geolocated footage shows Russia has advanced to the southeast of Korenevo in recent days, the ISW said.

An unnamed senior military source in Kyiv’s General Staff told Reuters in an article published on Saturday that Ukraine had lost more than 40 percent of the territory it controlled in Kursk. At its peak, Ukrainian forces controlled roughly 531 square miles of territory, the source said, adding that this has now dropped to approximately 309 square miles.

Russia has deployed just under 60,000 troops to Kursk, the source said, adding that Moscow was increasing its counterattacks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated in mid-November that around 50,000 Russian troops were fighting in Kursk. Kyiv’s top soldier, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, recently said roughly 45,000 of Moscow’s soldiers were concentrated in the region, but that the Kremlin was funneling more personnel to the area of fighting.

Ukraine has acknowledged Russia has launched counteroffensive pushes designed to peel back Kyiv’s grip in the region in recent months. But despite this, Russia has been slow to push opposition forces back to the border, while it has consistently made gains in Ukraine’s east, toward the strategic transit hub of Pokrovsk.

South Korean, U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have indicated that upward of 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Kursk to support Moscow’s war effort. Reports have indicated the fighters are dressed in Russian military uniforms and integrated into the Kremlin’s existing military forces.

Russia’s own troops are not enough” for operations in Kursk, Syrskyi said in a statement posted to messaging app Telegram in early November. “So they are trying to attract troops from North Korea there.”

Russia has not confirmed or denied the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk, but has signed a mutual defense pact with the secretive country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. Pyongyang has supplied a significant number of missiles and shipments of munitions to prop up Moscow’s war effort.

A South Korean intelligence official said earlier this week that Russia had provided air-defense equipment and “economic aid in various forms” to North Korea.

U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said on Saturday that he expected to see North Korean soldiers “engaged in combat soon.” The State Department confirmed in mid-November that North Korean soldiers were “engaging in combat operations with Russian forces” after undergoing training in how to use drones, artillery, and carry out “basic infantry operations.”

Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, told South Korean media earlier this month that North Korean soldiers had been involved in “small-scale clashes” so far

The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world,” Zelensky said earlier this month. “We must do everything to make this Russian step to expand the war—to really escalate it—to make this step a failure.”

On Friday, a Ukrainian official said North Korean troops had been spotted elsewhere along the Russian border with Ukraine. “Part of the military from the DPRK was transferred to the border areas of the Belgorod region,” said Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, referring to North Korea by its official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Newsweek could not independently verify this.