North Korean soldiers who joined their Russian allies in battle against Ukrainian forces have been pulled off the front lines after suffering heavy causalities, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials.
The North Korean troops, sent to bolster Russian forces trying to push back a Ukrainian offensive inside Russia’s borders, have not been seen at the front for about two weeks, the officials said after requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive military and intelligence matters.
The arrival of around 11,000 North Korean troops in Russia in November caused alarm in Ukraine and among its allies in the West, who feared their deployment signaled a significant escalation in the nearly three-year-old war. But in just three months, the North Korean ranks have diminished by half, according to Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander.
Ukrainian troops who have fought against the North Koreans have described them as fierce warriors. But disorganization in their ranks and a lack of cohesion with Russian units have quickly driven up casualties, a Ukrainian official said. Since arriving on the battlefield, the North Korean soldiers have been left to fend for themselves, advancing with few armored vehicles and rarely pausing to regroup or fall back, according to Ukrainian officials and frontline troops.
Critics of Ukraine’s military leadership criticized last year’s offensive into Russia’s Kursk region as a waste of resources at a time when the military inside Ukraine is faltering in the face of a prolonged Russian attack. But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has insisted on holding the territory for as long as possible, as a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.
The longer Ukrainians troops hold Kursk, the more embarrassing it becomes for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. Though Mr. Putin has vowed to expel the Ukrainian forces, he has been hesitant to divert troops from the main Russian operations in eastern Ukraine, in part to similarly strengthen his hand in future negotiations.
Into that fray stepped Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader and an ally of Mr. Putin. It was Mr. Kim who proposed sending troops to assist the Russians in Kursk, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, though Mr. Putin quickly embraced the idea.
Many of the soldiers are among North Korea’s best-trained special operations troops, but the Russians appear to have used them as foot soldiers, sending them forth in waves across fields studded with land mines to be mowed down by heavy Ukrainian fire.
The American officials said the decision to pull the North Korean troops off the front line may not be a permanent one. It is possible, they said, that the North Koreans could return after receiving additional training or after the Russians come up with new ways of deploying them to avoid such heavy casualties.
In any case, the fight to expel the Ukrainian forces from Kursk is far from over. A few weeks ago, Ukrainian forces launched a new offensive in the region, but they have been hammered by Russian defenses. Though the Ukrainians took about 500 miles of Russian territory when they swept across the border last summer, Russian forces have been able to retake about half of that.
The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region in August shocked the Kremlin. It was the first time in 10 years of fighting between the two countries, including Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, that Ukrainian troops had taken and held Russian territory.
In a speech this week, Mr. Zelensky praised the Ukrainian troops fighting in the Kursk region, saying their efforts had created “a buffer zone” to protect northeastern Ukrainian territory from additional Russian offensives.
Mr. Kim most likely has his own motivations for helping Russia in Kursk. American officials say he hopes Mr. Putin will repay the favor in the future, providing help for North Korea’s missile programs and diplomatic support at the United Nations.
North Korea has also supplied Russia with millions of artillery shells, which now account for about half of the munitions that Russia fires daily, along with rockets and missiles, according to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials. Russia has been providing North Korea with oil, food and some weapons upgrades.
Last summer, a few months before Ukraine launched its incursion into Kursk, Mr. Putin met with Mr. Kim in Pyongyang, where they restored a Cold War-era treaty of mutual defense and military cooperation between their countries.
