With Putin’s order that the Kursk region of Russia must be taken back by Russian forces, at any cost, by Christmas, the Ukrainians have injected some dark humor into the situation just in time for the holidays. To that end, they’ve also enlisted the help of 12,000 North Korean soldiers whose main ability seems to be following any order, no matter how ludicrous. More than a few videos have shown the North Koreans attacking in human waves through open snow-covered fields in their dark military fatigues, making them obvious to spot, and easily eliminated. Ukraine claims that upwards of 200 North Koreans were dispatched in this fashion last weekend.
Source: Forbes
According to the latest official estimate from Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation in Kyiv, the North Korean 11th Army Corps lost around 200 troops killed and wounded in a series of assaults targeting Ukrainian positions in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast last weekend.
At least a few of those casualties were inflicted by explosive first-person-view drones wearing Christmas ornaments. A reindeer. A Santa. An elf. A bird.
Videos of the festive drone strikes, conducted by the Ukrainian 8th Special Purpose Regiment deployed to the southwestern edge of the 250-square-mile salient the Ukrainians carved out of Kursk back in August, appeared online on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian drone operators’ dark humor belies the deadly seriousness of their task. North Korean manpower significantly stiffened Russian assaults in Kursk, allowing the combined Russian-North Korean force to recapture the village of Plekhove, on the eastern edge of the salient, after three costly infantry attacks last weekend.
Altogether, the Russians and North Koreans have around 60,000 troops in and around Kursk. The Ukrainians have just 20,000. But attacking across open ground is always more dangerous than defending from dug-in positions, so the manpower imbalance only confers a slight advantage to the Russians and North Koreans.
