Ukraine Reports First Contact With North Korean Troops

Facts

• Ukrainian forces have engaged with North Korean troops deployed in Russia for the first time, a number of Ukrainian officials said this week.^[1][2]
• In a post on Telegram on Tuesday, Andriy Kovalenko, a top Ukrainian counter-disinformation official, said: "The first military units of the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] have already come under fire in Kursk."^[3]
• Those comments were followed up by Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's defense minister, who said that a "small group" of North Korean soldiers were attacked in the Russian region, characterizing the incident as "so far just small contacts, not full-scale engagement."^[4][5]
• There is no indication at this stage that North Korean troops had returned fire, while the comments of Ukrainian officials cannot be independently confirmed.^[1]
• Elsewhere in the conflict, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — a US military think tank that tracks troop positions among the fighting — neither Russia nor Ukraine reported new advances in the Russian Kursk region over the past day.^[6]
• However, ISW reported that Russian forces made a number of gains inside Ukraine over the past day, including near Kremmina in the Luhansk region and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, as well as in and around Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Vuhledar, and Robotyne in the region of Donetsk.^[6]

Sources: ^[1]Associated Press, ^[2]POLITICO, ^[3]Financial Times, ^[4]BBC News, ^[5]Reuters and ^[6]Understanding War.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Associated Press. These combat clashes represent North Korea's direct involvement in the war, Europe's biggest conflict since World War II. This is a huge escalation of the conflict that risks undermining geopolitical stability worldwide, and Moscow should think carefully before inflaming and expanding the reach of this conflict further.
• Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by TASS. Russia has enjoyed decades of strong diplomatic and military ties with North Korea, and if Moscow decides to leverage this partnership in order to better defend its territory, that is a sovereign decision and fully compliant with international law. This development is not an escalation.