Soldier peers up at drone after being sent into Putin’s ‘meat grinder’

A soldier thought to be from North Korea peers up at a Ukrainian drone as he takes shelter on the snow-covered Russian frontline.

The images have emerged after Kim Jong Un’s regime deployed thousands of troops to support Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. 

Ukraine’s 95th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade said that the North Korean ‘mercenaries’ had been ‘marching en masse into the meat grinder.’ 

The brigade also shared a video purportedly showing the reinforcements being mowed down as they carried out an assault in the open.  

Further imagery purportedly shows the soldier in full tactical gear crouching down as he tries to take cover beside a tree in Kursk Oblast, where Ukrainian forces are occupying a salient on Russian ground.  

Multiple reports, including images of dead or captured North Korean troops, suggest Putin’s reinforcements are playing an active combat role more than 4,000 miles from their homeland.

Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko reported 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 today, the brigade, part of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said: ‘In just two days, the Russians lost over 50 personnel, with more than 100 additional “soldiers” sustaining severe injuries. Daily attempts to storm our positions remain futile.  

‘There is information that North Korean troops have arrived to assist the enemy, zealously marching en masse “into the meat grinder.” 

‘However, we will confirm that they were indeed Korean mercenaries only after a captured Korean tells us about their difficult fate.’ 

Confirmation that soldiers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are present on the battlefield was also reported by Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet.  

One video picked up by the investigative news platform purportedly shows the same infantry attack, said to have taken place south-west of the village of Kruglenkoe in Kursk. Several dozen troops are shown walking through an open space in a chain on December 14. 

Assessing the footage, Mediazona noted: ‘This is an extremely unusual tactic: Russian units advance either in small groups or use equipment to deliver infantry to the frontline.The authors of the channel suggested that this could be a unit of the DPRK, since it is not characteristic of Russian troops to move in such a herd.’ 

Around 3,000 North Korean had troops 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.  

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that a ‘significant number’ of the DPRK personnel had been deployed and that they had already suffered ‘noticeable’ losses.  

The reinforcements have been sent to attack the salient where Ukrainian forces have been in control for more than four months.  

The Kursk offensive is the first time foreign troops have captured ground within Russia’s legal borders since World War Two.   

Metro previously reported how one of the first Ukrainian soldiers onto Moscow’s legal territory in the offensive opened fire on a truckload of Russian troops his team had caught by surprise.

The Special Operations Forces operator said he sensed fear among the Kremlin’s soldiers as the elite units made way for the incursion.

The respected Institute for the Study of War in the US said on Monday that Russian forces had made advances in the oblast while Ukrainian forces had regained lost positions on other parts of the battlefield.  

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