The 12,000 troops sent by North Korea to bolster Vladimir Putin’s dwindling forces could be killed or wounded in the next three months, analysts have said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which has been following developments on the front lines of the Ukraine invasion since it began in February 2022, said in an assessment on January 16 that “the entirety of this North Korean contingent in the Kursk Oblast “They can be killed or injured in about 12 weeks.”
In early January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,800 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded in Kursk so far.
They were first reported to be on the battlefield in early November, and significant fighting occurred beginning in December.
The ISW estimates that the North Korean contingent is suffering losses of around 92 troops per day, and will be completely gone by mid-April if they “continue to suffer similarly high casualty rates in the future.”
The group added: “North Korean forces will likely continue to suffer a higher proportion of combat injuries and deaths, as is typical in armed conflicts, and it is unclear if or when wounded North Korean soldiers return to combat.”
Fighting has intensified in Russia’s Kursk region, with Ukrainian forces eliminating entire columns of tanks and the battlefield littered with the corpses of Russian and North Korean soldiers, chilling images reportedly show.
Desperate to recapture the region, part of which was first captured by kyiv forces in August and has been defended by Ukraine ever since, Vladimir Putin has sent wave after wave of troops to die as “cannon fodder.”
The 12,000 troops sent by North Korea to bolster Vladimir Putin’s dwindling forces could be killed or wounded in the next three months, analysts say.
The ISW estimates that the North Korean contingent is suffering losses of around 92 troops per day.
North Korean soldiers will be completely gone by mid-April if they “continue to suffer similarly high casualty rates in the future.”
Ukrainian machine gunners are reportedly so exhausted by the rate at which they have been killing their enemies that they are being replaced periodically.
One soldier compared the attack to the bloody sieges of eastern Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut, saying that “after two hours (the weapons operators) couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Here, the Russians need to take this territory at any cost and they are putting all their forces into it, while we are giving everything we have to hold it,” said Sergeant Oleksandr, 46, a Ukrainian infantry platoon leader. , to the New York Times. Times.
“We are holding on, destroying, destroying, destroying… so much it’s hard to even comprehend.”
Aiming to retake the city of Malaya Loknya, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the region, Putin’s forces reportedly launched a series of massive combined attacks involving some 50 armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers.
Ukrainian forces reportedly decimated the columns by disabling the leading vehicles with landmines and drone strikes, forcing those behind them to stop dead.