North Korea sent more troops to Russia, says the spy agency to the south

North Korea has sent more soldiers to Russia and reconfigured to the front line in the Western Kursk area, according to the South Korea intelligence agency.

It states that the exact number of additional troops sent is unknown, but military officials cited in the South Korean media have said they believe it is at least 1000.

Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang confirmed the new deployment.

It is believed that North Korea has suffered heavy losses in the four months since its troops were first located to help Russia in their war with Ukraine.

In January, Western officials told BBC They believed that at least 1,000 of the 11,000 soldiers sent from North Korea were killed in the last three months. North Korea and Russia did not comment.

The South Korean intelligence agency also said on Thursday that the North Korean troops, already in Russia, were re -established on the front line in Kursk in early February “after a month of lull”.

The Ukrainian Special Forces struggling in Kursk told the BBC in January that they have not seen any North Korean troops in weeks. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski later confirmed that they had returned to the front line.

More reported reports attributed to South Korean intelligence suggest that North Korean soldiers are unprepared for modern wars and are particularly vulnerable to Ukrainian drones.

However, Defects and other military experts have told the BBC These troops should not be underestimated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Fighting led to major losses on both sides.

Last August, Ukraine made lightning in the Russian Kursk region, surprising the border guards. Since then, Russia has been trying to expel them.

As Ukraine’s profits have been constantly repelled backwards, partly due to the arrival of the North Koreans in Russia in October, it still retains hundreds of square kilometers of Russian territory and inflicts huge losses to its enemy.

The Russian military has not publicly disclosed the victims of the battlefield since September 2022, when it is said that 5,937 soldiers were killed.

Zelenski has put the military victims of Ukraine at 45 100 – but a number of military experts in Ukraine and the West believe that the losses are much higher.

North Korean soldiers were located in October, after the bilateral ties between Putin and the North Korean leader Kim Jong -un. This included the signing of a security and defense contract.