North Korean soldiers "disguised" as Russian fighters from Siberia have clashed with Ukrainian troops, Kyiv's Defense Minister has said, although casualty counts among Pyongyang's forces are still unclear.
North Korean troops deployed alongside Moscow's own forces were dressed to look like Russian recruits from the eastern Siberian region of Buryatia, Rustem Umerov told South Korean broadcaster KBS.
Ukrainian, South Korean and Western intelligence have said in recent weeks that North Korea was sending between 10,000 and 12,000 soldiers to Russia to bolster Moscow's war effort against Kyiv.
Umerov said there had been "small-scale clashes" so far between Ukrainian and North Korean troops, but that Ukraine could not yet verify how many casualties North Korea had sustained or how many soldiers had become prisoners of war.
An unnamed Ukrainian official told The New York Times in an article published on Tuesday that the engagements involving North Korean troops were limited, probably intended to test Ukraine's lines for weak points.
Pyongyang's troops joined Russia's 810th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade, the official said. The U.S.-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said on Tuesday that Russia is likely trying to integrate the North Korean fighters into Russia's military structure, rather than having "separate North Korean units fighting under Russian command."
A U.S. official told the Times a significant number of North Korean troops were killed, but did not specify further.
"We have identified contact with North Korean forces, but we expect more engagements in the coming weeks, and we will analyze and review accordingly," Umerov added.
He said up to 15,000 troops could end up supporting Russian forces in Russia's southern Kursk region, where Moscow has been struggling to rip away Ukrainian control of a section of Russian territory close to the border since early August.
The Pentagon said on Monday that 10,000 North Korean troops were in Kursk. In late October, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. had not yet detected North Korean troops embroiled in combat, but that they would "join the fight against Ukraine in the coming days."
Many Western countries have denounced the arrival of North Korean troops for combat in Europe's largest land war since World War II as a dangerous escalation to the grinding and bloody conflict.
"The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Tuesday. "We must do everything to make this Russian step to expand the war—to really escalate it—to make this step a failure."
Andriy Kovalenko, the chief of tackling disinformation for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said on Monday that the first of North Korea's troops "have already come under fire" in Kursk.
The following day, Kovalenko said North Koreans were "in Russian military uniform" alongside Russian units in Kursk, learning how to use various types of drones against Ukrainian forces. The U.S. has previously said that Moscow has furnished North Korean troops with Russian military uniforms.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service spy agency said last month that an initial batch of 1,500 North Korean fighters had traveled to Russia, and were kitted out with Russian military uniforms, Russian-made weapons and fake documents claiming the fighters were residents of regions in Siberia.
"We expect more engagements in the coming weeks," said Umerov.
Pyongyang has supplied Moscow with a significant number of missiles and millions of shells. Its support, Kyiv's military intelligence chief previously said, makes North Korea the most formidable of Russia's allies for Ukraine to contend with. Kyiv has doggedly targeted ammunition depots storing North Korean munitions in recent months.
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