New photographs have proven North Korean mine warfare groups working within the Russian Kursk area, the place they’re tasked with clearing mines left by Ukrainian and allied Western forces. A Ukrainain-led incursion into Kursk was launched in August 2024, and was decisively repelled solely in April the next yr with the help of the Korean Individuals’s Army. North Korean engineers had been seen geared up with Russian VR-2-02 fight uniforms, Saiga-12K shotguns, RPK-74 automated rifles, AK-74M rifles, and a variety of mine clearance gear. The personnel retain arms as a result of persistent risk of Ukrainian drone assaults, with their armament thought of optimum for defence towards small unmanned plane. Russian Safety Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu in June first confirmed plans for the Korean Individuals’s Army to dispatch 1000 mine clearance consultants and 5000 army engineers to help de-mining and reconstruction efforts in Kursk.
The Ukrainian-led assault on Kursk has notably included personnel from numerous NATO members together with Poland and the USA, corresponding to these from the U.S. Ahead Remark Group contractor organisation, which revealed pictures on social media asserting its involvement. Russian officers have been significantly outspoken in expressing gratitude for the Korean Individuals’s Army’s intervention to help the nation’s battle effort towards Ukraine and its supporters, with International Minister Sergey Lavrov in July stating: “the heroic troopers of the the Korean Individuals’s Army along with the Russian servicemen introduced nearer the liberation of Kursk Area with the price of their blood and even their lives.”He added that monument to the Korean Individuals’s Army personnel who fought in Kursk could be erected in Russia, underneath an initiative that was “totally backed by our North Korean pals.”
The North Korea’s defence sector has performed an more and more central position in serving to to maintain Russia’s ongoing battle effort, with almost half of artillery rounds utilized by the Russian Army being of North Korean origin by the second quarter of 2025. Many Russian artillery models having come to rely nearly completely on Korean ammunition, with a minimum of six Russian Army artillery models by the center of the yr sourcing between 50 and 100% of their munitions from North Korea. Sources from either side have indicated that coaching ranges amongst North Korean personnel have remained considerably greater than these throughout a lot of the Russian Army, which has made the nation’s manpower help significantly invaluable.
