Russian forces are allegedly trying to burn the faces of dead North Korean troops to hide their presence on the battlefield.
Thousands of personnel from Kim Jong Un’s regime are supporting Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during which Moscow has suffered massive casualties.
Video footage and reports from the battlefield suggest they are being used to conduct ‘meat grinder’ assaults on Kyiv’s forces in Kursk Oblast.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X: ‘Even after years of war, when we thought the Russians could not get any more cynical, we see something even worse.
‘Russia not only sends the North Korean troops to storm Ukrainian positions but also tries to conceal losses of these people.
‘They tried to hide the presence of North Korean soldiers. It was prohibited to show their faces during training.
‘The Russians attempted to erase any video evidence of their presence.
‘And now, after first combats with our warriors, Russians are trying to literally burn the faces of North Korean soldiers killed in battle.’
The wartime leader’s words follow Ukraine’s 95th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade saying that North Korean ‘mercenaries’ had been ‘marching en masse into the meat grinder.’
The brigade shared a video purportedly showing the reinforcements being mowed down as they carried out an assault in the open.
Mr Zelenskyy added: ‘This is a demonstration of disrespect, which is currently prevalent in Russia, a disrespect to everything human.
‘There is not a single reason for North Koreans to fight and die for Putin. And even after they do, Russia has only humiliation for them.
‘This madness must be stopped—stoped by a reliable and durable peace, as well as Russia’s accountability for this cynical war.’
Further imagery shows a North Korean soldier crouching down as he tries to take cover beside a tree in Kursk, where Kyiv’s forces are occupying a salient on Russian ground.
A caption on an X video accompanying Mr Zelenskyy’s post says the soldier is among North Korean troops who stormed Ukrainian positions.
A grainy section of the footage then shows a person standing by what appears to be a body with fire at head level.
Another segment shows a North Korean soldier speaking to the camera alongside a Russian colleague.
A voice says ‘tell him to put on a mask’ before the Russian in shot says: ‘Come on! Nobody knows them here anyway.’
Multiple reports suggest Kim Jong’s troops are playing an active combat role more than 4,000 miles from their homeland.
Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko said that at least 500 North Koreans took part in wave attacks on Plekhovo in Kursk, with their losses estimated to be about half of those who took part.
The defenders repelled an initial advance before a second and third assault involving overwhelming numbers eventually wrested control of the village, according to Tsaplienko.
The North Koreans’ losses were so heavy that trucks were used to remove the fallen after the assault at the start of December, he reported.
In a social media post, the brigade, part of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said: ‘There is information that North Korean troops have arrived to assist the enemy, zealously marching en masse “into the meat grinder.”’
Around 3,000 North Korean troops had arrived in Russia by October 23, with plans to send up to 12,000 people from the state in total, according to South Korean intelligence.
Mr Zelenskyy said last week that a ‘significant number’ of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s personnel had been deployed and that they had already suffered ‘noticeable’ losses.
He did not advance any reasons as to why Russia would want to hide the presence of the reinforcements in his more recent comments.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think-tank, has said that the Kremlin is likely to continue avoiding publicly confirming the North Korean presence as it would ‘tacitly acknowledge’ that Russia needs foreign troops to recapture its own territory.
An admission would also go against Putin’s claims that the Ukrainian incursion has led to high recruitment rates in his country.
Moscow has previously attempted to disguise North Korean soldiers as Russian forces from the Republic of Buryatia, according to Ukrainian military officials and intelligence sources cited by the ISW.
The reinforcements are supporting counter-attacks in the salient where Ukrainian forces have been in control for more than four months.
They are joining a military notorious for brutality within its own ranks.
Ukrainian combat rescuer Fedir Serdiuk previously told Metro how drone footage showed that the Kremlin’s forces ‘think nothing of killing their own wounded soldiers.’
He said: ‘When the war started it was shocking, now it’s part of reality.
‘In Ukraine and the West we are steeped in the model that our values are shared by all human beings.
‘When the war started we had a reality check as we saw how Russian soldiers can have lunch in the trenches with the rotten bodies of their brothers around them.’
The ISW said today that Russian forces had made advances in Kursk and near Ukrainian towns and cities on other parts of the battlefield.
But the gains are coming at a huge cost.
The UK Ministry of Defence reported on December 10 that the Russian military is suffering from poor morale and sustaining more than 1,300 killed or wounded per day.
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