“There is evidence of DPRK troops in Russia,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Rome in October 2024. It was the first public US confirmation that North Korea had sent soldiers to fight beside Russia.
At that point almost everything else was in dispute. South Korean lawmakers said 3,000 troops had gone out of a promised 10,000 due by December. South Korea’s intelligence agency had reported about 1,500 special forces sent for training, issued Russian uniforms and weapons and fake identity papers. Ukraine’s Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said North Koreans could reach Russia’s Kursk region within days. North Korea’s envoy to the UN called the accusations “groundless rumors,” and the Kremlin’s Dmitry Peskov spoke of “conflicting information.”
Ukraine’s own Center for Countering Disinformation was cautious too. “There are no North Korean soldiers, yet,” its office said, warning that Russia might use the reports for propaganda.
Pyongyang owns up
By April 2025 the denials were over. North Korean state news agency KCNA reported that its soldiers had helped Russian forces “completely liberate” Kursk, on an order from Kim Jong Un, and said the deployment followed a mutual defense treaty. Days earlier, Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov had praised the troops’ “heroism,” the first public Russian acknowledgement. Western officials told the BBC that at least 1,000 of 11,000 soldiers had died in three months. Gerasimov also claimed full control of western Kursk, which Ukraine denied.
Experts had doubts about the soldiers. Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British Army tank commander, called them “barely trained troops led by Russian officers who they don’t understand.” Ukraine’s top commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, saw it differently, warning that an additional 11,000 to 12,000 “highly motivated and well-prepared soldiers” were pressing offensives, “based on Soviet tactics,” relying on numbers.
Where they are now
A February 2026 report from BFBS Forces News put the total sent at 14,000, with at least 6,000 believed dead. Some killed themselves rather than be captured, and only two were taken prisoner. That same week Kim opened a new residential district in Pyongyang for families of the dead.
The survivors have been absorbed into Russian units, where press access is tighter, and moved into roles such as artillery crews and reconnaissance drone operation. Around 3,000 are thought to have gone home as instructors. Kyiv says North Koreans are still fighting in the Sumy region, and tens of thousands more work in Russian arms factories, many assembling drones. That earns Pyongyang millions of dollars a month and gives it the engineering skills to build attack drones of its own.
Sources
- Ukraine War: North Korea confirms it sent troops to fight for Russia
- North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, U.S. confirms
- North Korean troops in Russia are being redeployed as Pyongyang seeks tactics and tech
