North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine have disappeared from the battlefield, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported this week.
“Since mid-January, there have been no signs showing North Korean troops deployed to the Russian Kursk region engaging in battle,” the NIS said on Tuesday.
An estimated 11,000 North Koreans were deployed to Kursk last December, to help Russia fight a Ukrainian counterinvasion launched last August.
The NIS statement confirmed a recent report by The New York Times, which cited heavy casualties among North Koreans as the reason for their redeployment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that as many as 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been wounded or killed – roughly a third of the corps. The NIS put the figure at 3,000.
Ukrainian commanders in the field have reported that Russian forces used North Koreans to spearhead attacks and that they were ordered to end their own lives rather than be captured, or were shot by their own side.
Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the claims.
The North Korean absence could be a temporary regrouping.
Zelenskyy told The Associated Press he had information that as many as 25,000 additional North Korean troops were en route to Kursk.
Experts, too, have told Al Jazeera that North Korean reinforcements are likely.
Russian troops are also suffering high losses.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence estimated Russian casualties at 48,240 last month – the second-highest monthly casualty rate in almost three years of war, only slightly behind December’s.
About a third of those losses were incurred around Pokrovsk, the eastern Ukrainian town in Donetsk that Russia has launched an intensive battle to capture.
“In January of this year alone, our soldiers neutralised more than 15,000 invaders [in Pokrovsk], of which about 7,000 were killed,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said on Saturday.
These sacrifices are being made for diminishing returns, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, has reported.
Russia gained 498sq km (192 square miles) of territory in the war last month, the ISW assessed, compared with 593sq km (229 square miles) in December.
“The roughly 100-square-kilometre (29-square-mile) decrease in seized territory between December 2024 and January 2025, coupled with a similar monthly casualty rate, indicates that Russian forces are taking the same high level of losses despite achieving fewer territorial advances in the near term,” said the ISW.
The ISW has previously estimated it will take Russia about two more years of war to complete the conquest of Donetsk alone.
Ukraine’s challenges on the battlefield
Ukraine, too, is suffering from manpower shortages and has reportedly paused efforts to build up to 12 new brigades, instead using its reserves to replenish losses within existing units.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly discuss war losses. But this week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s army had lost 45,100 soldiers on battlefields.
The Ukrainska Pravda (UP) website on Tuesday reported that Ukraine’s armed forces were preparing to filter 50,000 reservists into brigades fighting on the front lines to replace losses.
That number would boost front-line units by a fifth, according to The New York Times, which reported Ukraine’s front-line troops at a quarter of a million.
“We need to do this to launch the rotation mechanism,” an unnamed source told UP. “The resources that are currently trained in training centres are only enough for minimal replenishment of units, not for the full support of the combat component.”
Russia, too, is being solicitous of its manpower. It appeared to be attempting to encircle Pokrovsk to induce its defenders to pull out.
Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces fighting in Pokrovsk, told a telethon this week that the Russian strategy was to surround the city to avoid an urban battle. “We are talking about covering the city, starting from the south and going clockwise – south, southwest, west, and so on,” he said.
Russian forces attempted large-scale mechanised manoeuvres at the beginning of the war but got bogged down by a vigorous defence.
The ISW believed Russia performed its first successful encirclement when it seized Avdiivka, a city in Donetsk, a year ago.
Since then, the ISW believes it has tried to recreate pincer movements about 20-30km (12-19 miles) wide, and may be adopting a strategy of simultaneous, coordinated, slow pincer movements across the eastern front modelled on the capture of Avdiivka.
For example, Russia claimed last week to be making progress towards encircling Kupiansk, a city in Kharkiv, by seizing Dvorichna, a claim that is not yet borne out by geolocated footage. At the southern end of the front, Russia did succeed in enveloping and recapturing Velyka Novosilka last month.
The war in the air
Russia continued to bombard Ukrainian civilians in the past week, as it has done throughout this war.
Zelenskyy said Russia had launched 660 Shahed drones, nearly 50 missiles and 760 glide bombs into Ukraine during the week ending on Sunday.
The worst attack came overnight on Saturday.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russia launched a combined strike across the country involving 46 missiles of various types, and 123 Shahed kamikaze drones.
Ukraine’s air defences intercepted or destroyed all but six of the drones and a number of missiles, but one missile hit an apartment building in Poltava, killing 14 people and injuring 22, said Zelenskyy.
The missile demolished all five storeys on one side of a residential building in which some 86 people lived.
Zelenskyy said in his evening address, “This was just one Russian missile, bringing so much pain, suffering, and loss. That is why Ukraine – and real peace – require guarantees.”
Ukraine, too, carried on its campaign to interrupt Russian military production and energy sources.
On Friday, its drones struck a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd, setting it ablaze. The General Staff described it as “one of the ten largest oil refineries in Russia” processing 6 percent of all crude oil produced in the country.
Clearly there were other targets, as Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it downed 49 drones over seven regions.
On Monday, Ukrainian drones hit the Volgograd refinery again, this time reportedly damaging its central processor, and also hit the Astrakhan gas condensate processing plant, which Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) said can process 12bn tonnes a year, reportedly stopping production.
Ukraine also targets Russian command bunkers and air defences.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s southern forces struck and destroyed a Buk-M3 air defence system, and a Ukrainian missile struck a central command post in Kursk. “The enemy lost key officers from Russia and North Korea … I think we are talking about dozens of officers,” Zelenskyy told the AP.
Ukraine’s problematic ally
Ukraine’s European allies continued to announce arms transfers and investments in Ukraine’s own arms industry.
On January 30, Sweden announced new military spending of $1.2bn for armaments and investments in Ukraine’s drone industry, bringing its total military contributions to $5.6bn.
On Friday, Finland announced $200bn in defence items for Ukraine, bringing its contributions to $2.5bn.
But the United States, whose position on military assistance has been undeclared since President Donald Trump assumed office last month, has now made its aid conditional.
Trump wants Ukrainian lithium, uranium and other minerals in return for continued US military aid, he said on Monday.
“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine, where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things,” Trump said while signing executive orders in the White House.
Russia has seized about half of an estimated $26 trillion worth of minerals in Ukraine, The Washington Post has reported.
Even under the Biden administration, when military aid was not conditional on repayment, it was often insufficient.
A Reuters investigation has found that the Biden administration delayed arms shipments to Ukraine last year, partly due to concerns over escalation and partly due to confusion among branches of the US military about what Ukraine had actually received.
Monthly shipments averaged $558m between April and September, the investigation found, but shot up to $1.1bn a month after Trump won the November election.
Even that didn’t represent a surge in aid, Reuters said, but merely matched the monthly aid delivered during the first two years of the war.
“By November, just about half of the total dollar amount the US had promised in 2024 from American stockpiles had been delivered, and only about 30 percent of promised armoured vehicles had arrived by early December, according to two congressional aides, a US official, and a lawmaker briefed on the data,” Reuters wrote.
During this time, Ukraine lost most of the land it had recaptured in a 2023 counteroffensive.
