“Analysts of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicate that the new deployment of the North Korean military will maintain the current pace of infantry attacks in the Kursk region, but the new groups of North Korean soldiers will suffer no less losses, which may reach from 30 to 45 thousand killed and wounded every month.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Analysts of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicate that the new deployment of the North Korean military will maintain the current pace of infantry attacks in the Kursk region, but the new groups of North Korean soldiers will suffer no less losses, which may reach from 30 to 45 thousand killed and wounded every month.
Source: ISW
Details: North Korea will reportedly deploy a new military contingent to Russia by mid-March 2025, likely to maintain the current pace and intensity of grueling infantry attacks in the Kursk region.
The New York Times (NYT) reported on January 22 that a senior US Defense Department official said additional North Korean forces would arrive in Russia “within the next two months” (around mid-March 2025). However, the NYT did not specify the number of troops or whether North Korea is rotating forces or increasing the size of its overall presence in Russia.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on December 23 that North Korea may be preparing to deploy an unspecified amount of additional forces to Ukraine and military equipment to Russia, either as part of a rotational or additional deployment.
Literally: “ISW estimates that the entire North Korean contingent in Russia could be killed or wounded in action by about mid-April 2025 at current casualty rates, and new North Korean troop deployments, either to reinforce the current group or to rotate existing forces – probably intended to support the pace of Russian operations, despite heavy losses, which will amount to 30,000 to 45 000 people (total killed and wounded) every month”.
Details: North Korean troops have reportedly been training in eastern Russia for at least a month before deploying to the Kursk region for further close-range training in November 2024 and joining combat operations at least in early December 2024.
This timeline is roughly consistent with the possibility that a new contingent of North Korean troops could be trained and replace the shrinking group in the Kursk region by mid-April 2025, assuming the next batch of North Korean troops reportedly trains for as long as their predecessors, and will be deployed in Russia in late January or early February 2025.
Literally: “These new North Korean forces are unlikely to be able to significantly improve Russian operations and will likely face the same high casualties and complications when interacting with Russian forces as the current North Korean contingent, provided that the Russian command continues to use North Korean forces in the same way, as it has done until now”.
“ISW continues to assess that North Korea’s high casualties and difficulties with interoperability with Russian forces will affect the lessons the North Korean military command learns from engaging in a war initiated by Russia.”
We will remind:
- On January 11, it became known that Ukrainian soldiers captured two soldiers from North Korea in Kurshchyna.
- SSO fighters showed a video of how they captured and took a North Korean soldier out of Russia.
- On January 20, a North Korean soldier who was captured by the Special Operations Forces in Kurshchyna served in a reconnaissance battalion and claims that he did not know who he was going to fight against.
- Ukrainian soldiers from the 95th Airborne Assault Brigade told how they captured a North Korean soldier in Kurshchyna in the Russian Federation. Not wanting to be captured, he hit his head on a concrete pillar and passed out.
- Operators of the Special Operations Forces destroyed 21 and wounded 40 North Korean soldiers who were advancing on Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation.