North Korean troops are suffering heavy casualties in fighting in Russia’s Kursk region and are facing logistical difficulties due to Ukrainian attacks, Ukrainian military intelligence said on Thursday.
The intelligence agency, known by the acronym GUR, said Ukrainian attacks near Novoivanovka inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units.
It was said that North Korean troops were also struggling with supply problems and even a shortage of drinking water.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this week that 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed and wounded in fighting in the Kursk region.
It was Ukraine’s first significant estimate of North Korean casualties, several weeks after Kiev announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to support it in the nearly three-year war.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported early Friday that the country’s intelligence agency said an injured North Korean soldier had been captured alive.
The agency appeared to confirm earlier reports that a North Korean soldier assigned to fight for Russia had been captured by Ukrainian forces.
In August, Ukrainian forces launched an invasion of the Kursk region that dealt a major blow to Russia’s reputation and forced the country to redeploy some of its troops from eastern Ukraine, where they had been pushing a slow-moving offensive.
The Russian army was able to recapture some areas in the Kursk region, but was unable to completely expel the Ukrainian troops.
Russia increases attacks in Ukraine
At the same time, Russia is trying to break Ukraine’s resistance with waves of cruise missiles and drone strikes against Ukraine’s power grid and other infrastructure.
In the latest attack on Christmas morning, 78 missiles and 106 drones hit power plants, the Ukrainian Air Force said. It said it intercepted 59 missiles and 54 drones and jammed 52 other drones.
On Thursday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 31 exploding drones. Twenty were shot down and another 11 failed to reach their target due to blockages, the Ukrainian Air Force said.
Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Wednesday, hitting a thermal power plant and prompting Ukrainians to seek shelter in subway stations on Christmas morning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on X that more than 70 missiles and 100 attack drones had been used to attack Ukraine’s energy sources.
As part of the daily bombardment, Russian forces also attacked a central market in Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region with a drone, injuring eight people, according to local authorities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday that Russia could attack Ukraine again with the new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile, which was first used in an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on November 21.
Speaking to reporters, Putin said Russia had few Oreshnik missiles, but added that it would not hesitate to use them against Ukraine.
“We are in no hurry to use them because they are powerful weapons intended for specific tasks,” he said. “But we would not rule out their use today or tomorrow if necessary.”
Putin said Russia had begun mass production of the new weapon and reiterated a plan to deploy some Oreshnik missiles to Russia’s neighbor and ally Belarus, where authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko told reporters on Thursday his country could host 10 or more missiles .
Vladimir Putin says his troops will regain full control of the western Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched an offensive last summer. However, the Russian president, who held an annual press conference in Moscow on Thursday, declined to give a specific date.
Ukraine retaliated with its own drone strikes. Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications said the military had attacked a facility producing ballistic missile fuel in Kamensk-Shakhtynsky in Russia’s southern Rostov region.
“This attack is part of a broader campaign to weaken the ability of Russian armed forces to carry out terrorist attacks against Ukrainian civilians,” it said in a statement.
