First North Korean troops to arrive in Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday, says Ukraine intelligence head

The first contingent of North Korean troops is expected to arrive in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region on Wednesday, Ukrainian military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov told American military news outlet The War Zone on Tuesday.

“We are waiting for the first units tomorrow in the Kursk direction,” Budanov said on Tuesday, though he stressed that details on North Korean troop numbers and equipment would only become clear “after a couple of days”.

On Thursday, Budanov said that 11,000 North Korean infantry troops were undergoing training for combat readiness by the start of November in Russia’s Far East and that Kyiv anticipated around 2,600 of them to be dispatched to the Kursk region, where Russia continues its efforts to reclaim areas captured by Ukrainian forces in August.

South Korean intelligence later confirmed that Pyongyang was preparing to send four brigades comprising a total of 12,000 soldiers to bolster Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, Seoul is mulling deploying its own military intelligence officers to Ukraine to monitor the activities of North Korean troops in response.

Pyongyang and Moscow have deepened their military cooperation since Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defence pact in June, with The Wall Street Journal reporting on Tuesday that the pact contained a secret clause on North Korea sending its troops to support the Russian army in Ukraine so they could “learn first hand how to execute a war”.

In a separate interview with The Economist on Tuesday, Budanov claimed Moscow was helping Pyongyang strengthen its nuclear capabilities by “transferring some technologies for low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and submarine missile-launch systems” in exchange for North Korean soldiers.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the deployment of North Korean troops to the battlefield the “first step to a world war”, Pyongyang dismissed accusations it was sending soldiers to fight alongside the Russian military as “groundless rumours” and stressed that its relations with Moscow were “legitimate and cooperative”.