This week, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported that North Korean soldiers who were battling Ukraine have vanished from the battlefield.
“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.
In order to assist Russia in a counterinvasion launched last August, 11, 000 North Koreans were sent to Kursk in December.
The New York Times reported on a recent report that cited severe casualties among North Koreans as justification for their redeployment, and the NIS statement confirmed that.
Up to 4, 000 North Korean soldiers have been wounded or killed, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. That is roughly a third of the corps. The NIS put the figure at 3, 000.
Russian forces used North Koreans to launch attacks, according to Ukrainian commanders, and they were instructed to end their own lives rather than be taken or killed by their own side.
The claims were not independently verified by Al Jazeera.
The North Korean absence could be a temporary regrouping.
According to Zelenskyy, who spoke with The Associated Press, 25 000 additional North Korean troops were on the way to Kursk.
Experts, too, have told Al Jazeera that North Korean reinforcements are likely.
Russian troops are also dealing a lot of 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.
Around Pokrovsk, the eastern Ukrainian town in Donetsk, where Russia has waged a fierce conflict to occupy, suffered about a third of those losses.
“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 ISW noted that the seized territory decreased by roughly 100 square kilometers (29 square miles) between December 2024 and January 2025, which suggests that Russian forces are still enduring the same high level of losses despite making fewer territorial advances in the near future.
According to the ISW, the conquest of Donetsk will require roughly two more years of conflict for Russia.
Ukraine’s challenges on the battlefield
Ukraine, too, is suffering from manpower shortages, and it reportedly has put a stop to creating 12 new brigades instead of using its reserves to make up lost ground within already-existing units.
Russia and Ukraine don’t frequently discuss war losses. But this week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s army had lost 45, 100 soldiers on battlefields.
According to the Ukrainska Pravda (UP) website, the Ukrainian military was preparing to convert 50, 000 reserve soldiers into brigades fighting on the front lines to replace losses on Tuesday.
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 combat component is not fully supported by the resources that are currently trained in training centers, not to mention that the limited replenishment of units is only available through these resources.
Russia, too, is being solicitous of its manpower. It appeared to be attempting to encircle Pokrovsk and force its backers to leave.
The Khortytsia group of forces fighting in Pokrovsk, according to Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for the organization, is attempting to avoid an urban conflict by enlarging the city. “We are talking about covering the city, starting from the south and going clockwise – south, southwest, west, and so on”, he said.
At the start of the war, Russian forces made extensive mechanized manoeuvres, but a strong defense prevented them.
The ISW believed that Russia’s first successful encirclement was achieved when it seized Donetsk’s Avdiivka 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. Last month, Russia did well to envelop and retake Velyka Novosilka at the southern end of the front.
The war in the air
In the past week, Russia continued to bombard Ukrainian civilians, as it has throughout the conflict.
In the week that ended on Sunday, Zelenskyy claimed that Russia had launched 660 Shahed drones, nearly 50 missiles, and 760 glide bombs into Ukraine.
The worst attack came overnight on Saturday.
According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ General Staff, Russia carried out a combined strike that included 123 Shahed kamikaze drones and 46 different missile launches.
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.
A residential building with 86 residents and five storeys on either side was destroyed by the missile.
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. It is “one of the ten largest oil refineries in Russia,” according to the General Staff, which processes 6% of the nation’s crude oil.
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.
Russian command bunkers and air defenses are also targets for Ukraine.
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. Zelenskyy told the AP that “the enemy lost key officers from Russia and North Korea,” and that he believes there are dozens of officers missing.
Ukraine’s problematic ally
Ukraine’s European allies continued to announce arms transfers and investments in Ukraine’s own arms industry.
Sweden’s total military contributions to Ukraine’s drone industry increased by $1.2 billion to $5.6 billion on January 30 with new military spending of $1.2 billion for armaments and investments.
On Friday, Finland announced $200bn in defence items for Ukraine, bringing its contributions to $2.5bn.
However, the United States has now made its aid conditional, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement to go into office last month.
Trump wants US military support for continued funding for lithium, uranium, and other minerals, he claimed on Monday.
While signing executive orders in the White House, Trump said, “We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them.”
According to The Washington Post, Russia has seizeed about half of Ukraine’s estimated $ 26 trillion in minerals.
Even under the Biden administration, when military aid was not conditional on repayment, it was often insufficient.
According to a Reuters investigation, the Biden administration delayed arms shipments to Ukraine last year because of concerns about escalation and confusion among US military branches regarding what they 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.
According to Reuters, even that did not result in a major increase in aid; rather, it was just a matching amount to the aid provided during the war’s first two years.
“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.
Source: Aljazeera
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