North Korean troops 'suffer heavy losses and kill eight in friendly

North Korean troops deployed in Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war are reportedly being hit with heavy losses and killed eight soldiers in a friendly fire incident, according to military experts.

Pyongyang has sent thousands of soldiers to bolster Putin’s invasion which has left hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers killed or wounded since he launched it in February 2022, with similarly high Ukrainian casualties.

Western officials reported that the North Korean troops were so poorly trained that they were delayed from being sent to engage in the fighting.

Kyiv says they have now joined Putin’s troops seeking to recapture a swathe of the Kursk region of Russia which was seized by Ukrainian forces in a surprise attack in the summer.

Reports are now emerging of how difficult Putin’s military chiefs have found it to integrate the North Korean soldiers to fight alongside their ranks.

“North Korean forces are reportedly facing expected struggles with high casualties and poor communication with Russian forces in Kursk Oblast (province), likely disrupting coordination between North Korean and Russian personnel and undermining Russian military operations,” said the Institute for The Study of War.

The Washington-based think tank added that Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on December 14 that North Korean forces in the Kursk region “recently fired at Chechen ‘Akhmat’ Spetsnaz (special forces) battalion vehicles and killed eight Chechen personnel in a friendly fire incident, likely due to the language barrier between the Russian and North Korean forces”.

The ISW stressed: that the GUR had claimed that the “language barrier also hinders effective combat coordination between Russian and North Korean forces”.

The Kyiv intelligence chiefs also reported that a “contingent consisting of Russian and North Korean servicemen in Kursk lost 200 personnel as of December 14 and that Ukrainian drones swarmed a North Korean position, which is consistent with recent reports of North Korean forces engaging in attritional infantry assaults,” according to the ISW.

Dozens of North Korean soldiers were reported killed.

The ISW emphasised: “The poor integration and ongoing communication problems between Russian and North Korean forces will likely continue to cause friction in Russian military operations in Kursk Oblast (province) in the near term.”

Ukraine, the US, Britain and other allies are fighting an information war against Russia so briefings from their military intelligence agencies need to be treated with caution but are far more believable than the propaganda issued by the Kremlin.

Putin is seeking to seize as much territory in eastern Ukraine ahead of Donald Trump becoming US president on January 20, having said he could end the war in a day.

The outgoing Joe Biden administration and other allies have sent more military equipment to Kyiv to help it try to stop increasingly quick Russian advances.

Mr Biden agreed to allow Ukraine to fire long range missiles supplied by the West, including British Storm Shadows, into Russia after the North Korean troops were deployed to Russia.

Russian troops captured the village of Shevchenko in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, the TASS state news agency reported on Monday, citing Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of the region.

Russia launched 49 drones to attack Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian military said on Monday.

Of the 49 drones, the air force shot down 27 and lost track of 19, likely due to electronic warfare.

Three drones remained in the Ukrainian air space as of Monday morning, it added.

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