It's not just arms that North Korea is supplying to Russia in its war on Ukraine. Soldiers too:
North Korean soldiers supporting the Russian invasion have been killed in occupied parts of Ukraine, the government in Kyiv has said, confirming the strengthening relationship between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
A security official in the Ukrainian government was responding to speculation by South Korea’s defence minister that North Korean troops could soon be sent to fight in Ukraine.
“It has already sent them,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation....
Last week, the Kyiv Post quoted unidentified intelligence sources saying that six North Koreans had been among 20 soldiers killed by a Ukrainian missile in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, and that three more were wounded.
Ukraine’s Channel 24 television said that the strike on October 3 hit a training camp for the North Korean soldiers.
It quoted an adviser to the Ukrainian mayor-in-exile of Mariupol, a city besieged and taken by Russia in 2022. Pyotr Andryushchenko said he had received information that North Korean shells were being brought into the port of Mariupol, that North Koreans were “systematically appearing” in the city and that they were “causing problems for locals”....
Western intelligence sources said last week that half the shells used by Russia — or about three million a year — were being supplied by North Korea. At the beginning of the year Ukrainian intelligence was playing down Kim’s contribution to Russia’s war, claiming that half the shells supplied were duds.
But last month the Ukrainian intelligence chief, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, said North Korea had become Putin’s biggest supplier of arms.
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