A battalion of 3,000 North Korean soldiers will shortly join Russian troops in fighting Ukraine, marking Pyongyang’s full entry into the war.
Intelligence sources said the unit has been secretly training in Russia’s Far East ahead of deployment as part of a Russian airborne regiment.
“They are called the Buryat Battalion,” a senior Ukrainian military source told Politico. Buryatia is a remote region of Russia bordering Mongolia that the Kremlin has targeted heavily for military recruitment.
The Kyiv Independent quoted another Western intelligence source claiming that North Korea had sent 10,000 soldiers to join the Russian army.
(…)
So one intelligence source says 10,000 have already been sent, and another says 3,000 will soon be sent.
These are just rumours. Inconsistent rumours.
This is clickbait for a paywalled article.
This is true for basically everything in a war zone. Some idea is better than no idea IMO. Yes, you have to piece together your own assessment from the data, but I’d prefer to have the data than not.
As far as I can tell these claims are largely coming from Ukrainian sources. I have not seen independent validation from anywhere else. At best we can say is that Ukrainian intelligence claims North Koreans troops are being deployed as part of Russia’s invasion.
Unfortunately, the headline of this article acts as if this is a known fact. A better headline would be include the source of the accusation being made. That’s a problem because most in this thread and the other similar threads are treating the claims made as fact and any reasonable skepticism is downvoted and dismissed.
This is something new but I’m still pretty skeptical and I think rightly so. Photos and videos posted to telegram aren’t always what people claim they are. I also haven’t seen any new media willing to say whether or not these videos show what they purport to show. I’d add that it’s also entirely possible for North Korean troops to enter Russia as part of some joint training exercises. However, they may not be intended for deployment in Ukraine.
I’d also be interested to know why the US or NATO do not seem to want to validate any of these claims at this time.
