A new wave of North Korean troops headed for Russia includes 400 drone operators, according to Major General Vadym Skibitskiy, deputy head of Ukrainian Defense Intelligence. The force already in Russia stands at 8,500.
Most of them are in the Kursk region, Skibitskiy said, along with a thousand engineers and deminers. Many of the drone operators picked up experience in earlier North Korean deployments, and he expects their drones to be used both to survey and to attack targets inside Ukraine. Ukraine first reported North Korean troops flying attack drones last October. This is the first sign that the new arrivals can do the same.
Skibitskiy said Moscow may ask for up to 50,000 more soldiers when Vladimir Putin meets Kim Jong Un in September. About 25,000 North Koreans have so far been deployed or rotated through Russia’s military. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, rejected the claim that tens of thousands more were coming and called it a “groundless self-fabricated scenario.”
Ukrainian intelligence does not expect the new troops to fight on Ukrainian soil. Skibitskiy said they would hold Russia’s rear positions, which frees Russian units for assaults inside Ukraine.
From Kursk to the drone war
The first North Korean deployment began in Kursk in October 2024, to repel a Ukrainian incursion. Pyongyang said nothing for months and confirmed only in April 2025 that its soldiers were fighting Ukraine. An estimated 10,000 were sent, and they took heavy losses by rushing Ukrainian positions in mass assaults. The wounded went home and passed on what they had learned about drones.
Ukrainian soldiers saw the change as it happened. “They went from using World War II tactics to managing on the battlefield with drones,” Capt. Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 225th Separate Assault Brigade, told NPR in 2025. “And they learned very quickly.”
Missiles and what Pyongyang wants back
Skibitskiy said that before last August, North Korea had sent at least 150 KN-23 or KN-24 ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine, with another 120 promised. Forty of those have been delivered. He said two are suspected to have been used on July 30 in Radushne, in the Dnipro region, in an attack that killed at least four children from one family. Kyiv is short of Patriot interceptors, among the few systems able to bring such missiles down.
About 90 North Korean personnel have gone to Voronezh to help with launches, Skibitskiy said. Newer versions of the missile reach 800 km but often land 15 to 19 km off target, and he said North Korea is using the strikes to improve its targeting and payloads.
In return, Pyongyang has asked Russia for the S-400 air defense system and has already received a Pantsir-1 surface-to-air launcher.
The reports come days after President Donald Trump said military drills with South Korea would be scaled down so as not to antagonize Kim, whom he wants to meet again.
Sources
- North Korea boosts support for Russia to include drone operators, Ukraine says | CNN
- North Koreans fighting for Russia against Ukraine have grown skilled in drone warfare
