Over the weekend, North Korean soldiers began going home in body bags as they fought alongside the Russians in large numbers for the first time.
“Today we already have preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their attacks. “A significant number of them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
The Military Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR) reported that the North Koreans, along with Russian naval and airborne troops – elite units – were stationed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive.
“At one of the positions in the Kursk region, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) army soldiers were effectively ‘covered’ with (first-person view) drones,” the GUR said in a statement, estimating total Russian and soldier losses at 200 North Koreans on the first day of engagement.
Al Jazeera could not confirm the toll.
Eight of them were reportedly killed when North Koreans accidentally opened fire on Chechen troops Akhmat Battalion.
“The language barrier remains a difficult obstacle to management and coordination,” the GUR said.
Many of the losses occurred as North Korean troops attempted to recapture the Russian villages of Plekhovo, 2 km (1.2 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and Vorozhba and Martynovka, 10 km (6.2 miles) inside Russia.
Ukraine’s Birds of Magyar, a Marine Corps unit specializing in unmanned air combat, released a video on Sunday purporting to be about North Koreans killed in Kursk. The drone footage hovered over a row of bodies with obscured faces.
“After each wave, 4-5 Koreans arrive on buggies, line up mangled carcasses in a strip, like in the video, and mask the faces of the deceased,” the unit said in a statement.
The other Ukrainian units fighting in Kursk were proud to highlight success against North Koreans, whose presence Kiev sees as a significant escalation of the conflict.
The Faust unit of the Ukrainian special forces reported that 33 North Koreans were killed or injured by light drones in Kursk.
“Despite their rather strange walks through the fields, the Koreans are trained to shoot back at drones and try to run away from them. They have not yet adopted the Russian tactic of freezing the appearance of an FPV (drone),” the unit wrote on its Telegram channel.
The 8th Regiment of Ukrainian Special Forces said it killed 50 North Korean soldiers and wounded 47 in Kursk between Saturday and Monday.
Separately, the 95th Polissia Airborne Assault Brigade claimed to have killed more than 50 soldiers and injured 100 in two days. “However, we will only claim that these were Korean mercenaries after a Korean prisoner tells of his difficult fate,” the brigade wrote on its Telegram page.
“After heavy losses, DPRK units began setting up additional observation posts to detect drones,” Ukrainian military intelligence said on Tuesday.
Zelensky posted that Russia was using cruel tactics to cover up the loss of North Korean soldiers.
“After the battles with our guys, the Russians are also trying to literally burn the faces of the killed North Korean soldiers,” he wrote on Telegram.
He added: “There is no reason for Koreans to fight and die for Putin. And even after her death, only derision awaits her from Russia.”
There were no statements from Russia or North Korea regarding these first victims of Korean mercenaries.
Operations on Russian soil
Ukraine has also had success in carrying out sabotage and assassination attacks behind enemy lines.
On the night of Friday to Saturday, saboteurs set fire to a Su-30 fighter jet on the tarmac of the Krymsk airfield in the Krasnodar Territory.
That same night, Ukraine attacked the Steel Horse fuel production and unloading facility in Russia’s Oryol region, saying it was being used to supply the military.
The day before, they set fire to and damaged three locomotives used to transport war material to Ukraine.
Ukraine also carried out two high-profile attacks.
On Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) carried out an assassination attempt General Igor Kirillovthe head of the Russian radiation, chemical and biological protection troops. Kirillov was blown up as he walked past a parked scooter laden with explosives on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow’s eastern suburbs.
Kirillov was suspected of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers. His assistant, Major Ilya Polikarpov, was also killed.
On Thursday, Ukrainian agents were suspected of murdering a top Russian military scientist.
Mikhail Shatsky was found dead in the Kuzminsky Forest Park in Moscow. He was reportedly involved in modernizing Kh-59 missiles to the Kh-69 level and wrote AI software for unmanned aerial vehicles for the Russian military.
Shatsky was software chief at Mars, the Moscow research and design bureau, a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy agency.
ATACMS may be doing its job
Ukraine may also have managed to push Russian aircraft far enough from the front line to impair their ability to fire glide bombs.
Ukraine’s General Staff noted that Russia fired 431 glide bombs in the first 12 days of December, after firing more than three times as many in the first 12 days of November.
“The sharp decline in the number of guided-air bomb attacks could be explained by Ukraine’s permission to penetrate deep into Russia with long-range Western missiles,” Ukrainian news agency Agentstvo News wrote, quoting OSINT analyst Oliver Alexander.
“According to him, the threat of the use of ATACMS forced Russian aviation to relocate Su-34 fighter-bombers to airfields located more than 600 km (370 miles) from the front line – outside the destruction zone of Western missiles,” Agentstvo said .
US President Joe Biden authorized deep strikes using ATACMS on November 17, and Ukraine carried out its first confirmed use of the missiles two days later. The day after, British and French Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles were deployed.
Figures from the Ukrainian General Staff show that the number of Russian glide bombs fell steadily in the second half of November.
According to the General Staff, the average daily number of glide bombs was 110 in November. In December it fell to about 40, Agentstvo said.
“Russian forces are therefore currently on track to fire only a third of the total number of glide bombs that Russian forces fired in November 2024 this month,” said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based agency resident think tank.
Glide bombs are important because they have a huge blast radius, and Ukraine credits them with helping Russia win the battle for the city of Avdiivka in February. Since then, Russian forces have advanced slowly but steadily, forming a 40-kilometer salient west of Avdiivka.
Nevertheless, US President-elect Donald Trump said he was against Biden’s decision.
“I don’t think they should allow missiles to be fired 200 miles into Russia. I think that was a bad thing,” Trump said in his first post-election news conference. “I thought it was a very stupid thing to do.”
Trump has said he will try to seek a ceasefire agreement in 2025.
The ATACMS decision “removed a potential negotiating tool that President-elect Donald Trump could have used in future peace negotiations,” Demetries Andrew Grimes, a former US naval officer, aviator and diplomat who supports Trump, told Al Jazeera.
Some have criticized Biden for granting the permission too late.
“The long hesitation gave Russia time to move some of its logistics further away,” said Minna Alander, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “It is still important that Ukraine is now able to attack Russian territory as it can finally fight in a meaningful way,” she told Al Jazeera.
Grimes believed the decision “increased Russia’s urgency to secure gains on the battlefield as the Russians now face the threat of widespread attacks on critical military infrastructure.”
ISW estimates that Russia doubled its rate of advance in November compared to October, claiming an average of 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) per day. According to ISW, it ate away a total of 2,356 square kilometers (910 square miles) of Ukrainian land in 2024.
Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked the armed forces for “liberating” 189 settlements this year during a Defense Ministry board meeting on Monday. He said it had been “a groundbreaking year in achieving the objectives of the special military operation.”
The most recent use of ATACMS came on the morning of December 11, when six missiles attacked Russia’s Taganrog airfield, a move “to which there will be a response,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia’s war from the air
Russia has liberally launched airstrikes on Ukrainian cities and its military.
On Friday, Russia launched what ISW said was the largest airstrike ever against Ukraine with 94 missiles and 193 kamikaze drones.
Ukraine shot down 81 of the missiles and 80 of the drones and disoriented another 105 with electronic warfare systems, but Ukrainian energy operator DTEK reported severe damage to five of its power plants.
“Each missile targeted a specific energy facility,” Zelensky said. “The strike coincided with the cold snap. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror aimed specifically at our people.”
Zelensky told a Joint Expeditionary Force meeting that Ukraine needed 12 to 15 air defense systems to protect its skies, beyond the five promised at the NATO summit in Washington in July, increasing the number for the second time in two weeks .
On December 10, Zelenskyj demanded ten to twelve Patriot systems; in April he had demanded at least seven. His latest figure does not specifically relate to Patriot systems.
In a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Zelensky ruled out “just a pause in hostilities… just something temporary or uncertain.” We need a strong common position – from all partners – and we need real peace.”
