Summary
Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR) reports that North Korean troops supporting Russia in the Kursk region are facing heavy casualties, logistical issues, and water shortages due to Ukrainian strikes.
Ukraine estimates 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded out of the 10,000-12,000 deployed by Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, Russia continues its drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, with recent attacks targeting power infrastructure and civilian areas.
President Putin threatened further use of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, while Ukraine retaliates with strategic strikes on Russian military infrastructure.
I think most people don’t realize how many nations who think about waging war against another nation value experiences taught in Ukraine. The usage of FPV drones has been shown as highly effective. Hell, even in Gaza there seems to be heavy drone usage on the side of Israel.
People should be worried about NK soldiers in Ukraine. That signals that they are interested to train their soldiers for modern warfare. In general the war in Ukraine has opened Pandora’s Box, now there is a willingness to use AI controlled drones in Radio jammed combat zones. Only a few years ago people shuddered about the thought of it. Now it isn’t even a big discussion.
All this to say Putin sucks. This invasion could be the start of a dark chapter in history and it’s just because he thinks Russian influence can only be maintained by military force.
X military intelligence tells the press one of their enemies is losing.
As is tradition.
No shit!
Turns out soldiers that have never seen battle don’t do well against soldiers who have years of experience.
It’s not just experience, it’s training. Ukraine’s military was extensively retrained by Canadian advisors to get them up to our standards of tactics, strategy, and operational logistics. Russia is still stuck on old Soviet doctrine, and North Korea is still basically trying to fight WW2.
Not just Canada, the UK has trained around 35k Ukrainians soldiers, Germany and Poland around 10k, France around 5k and the others Europeans countries are contributing as well.
I don’t think North Korea would take any survivors back. At home they are exposed to constant propaganda how north Korea is the best and superior to everyone. Now they got to see Russian Cities who got all the western goods up until 2 years ago.
Kim does not want them back to tell their families how much better it is in the rest of the world.
NK routinely leases what is effectively slave labour to a bunch of countries. They do take them back afterwards.
Do you think they got to see something? I’m sure they just got herded on trains and funneled through Russia.
There are all sorts of civilians they sell into servitude in China. Most of them are eventually repatriated.
They needs lots of them back as trainers.
Do anyone else wonder why Kim was open to being embarrassed this way? Hardly helps his fiction of North Korea being amazing.
I can guess a few reasons. First is he’s getting something out of it. He’s probably getting technology and weapons, but also probably money and potentially officers are getting experience in a real modern war.
Also, it’s fewer mouths to feed in NK if they’re dead. That alone probably makes it nearly neutral. It’s not like those back home are going to be hearing about how these soldiers are just being thrown away to die.
Because it’s valuable to send troops to a modern conflict zone, so in the end you have veterans who can train the next batch of soldiers in drone warfare. I think South Korea is worried about this
Because nobody back home will ever find out what happened to the dead soldiers.
SK could coordinate with Ukraine collate videos of dead NK people, or NK people being killed without mercy through drones. Then blast it through the DMZ border. Or drop pamphlets of pictures of dead NK soldiers through planes.
They already do. There’s an ongoing effort to smuggle outside news and media into North Korea. But you can’t just “blast it through the DMZ”. You have to get the stuff into formats they can play with appropriate subbing or dubbing where needed, and then sneak it across in USB thumb drives that are then quietly distributed by rebels in the north. It’s a difficult and dangerous process.
One possibility is that it isn’t a grand war campaign for him, but a death sentence he is bestowing on the unlucky or unfavored. It’s not supposed to be a success - it’s supposed to be a slaughter.
Ah true, that’s a good point
It’s speculation, but think about what Putin can offer Kim. Money, technological assistance, maybe even nuclear secrets
Removed by mod
the Norks
Can we not? Feels too much like “the Japs.”
I’ve not heard anyone take umbridge with calling Russians “orcs” or “ruskies” yet, to be fair, not with calling our German and Japanese enemies during WWII Jerry or Japs respectively. Jap is just a handy shortened single syllable way of saying Japanese. For another example of this in peace time, people from Great Britain get called Brits. It’s not a race thing, just a slang thing.
The war slangs aren’t terms we’d use today of course, as they’re no longer our enemies and such slang carries the unspoken “We call them this because they’re our enemy and they don’t get to decide what we call them” connotation, but for the moment in 2024, Russia and North Korea are the enemy of Ukraine, so they’re fair game.
I see your point though, but I don’t believe this is a race thing at all, not in my eyes anyway, I think it’s just a “They’re the enemy and we need a simple, easy and quick to pronounce slang nickname for them that is functionality useful, watch also sometimes shows our current hatred of them as our mortal enemy and as a way to help unite us against a foe, in the case of ‘orcs’ for example”.
But yeah, if people are using these terms to be racist or whatever, screw those guys, they suck.
The “quick and easy way,” for future reference, is NK.
And I remove “orcs” as well when I see it. Just because the country is run by horrible people is not a reason to use epithets that cover the entire country. That is simply bigotry and it’s not okay to be bigoted against Russians and North Koreans even if their leaders do horrific things.
Orcs and Norcs?
It’s the working class vs the 1%, not civilians vs civilians.
Fuck these lines on the map. We should not be divided any longer!
Bullshit, I never seen Putin rape and kill people in Ukraine, those were the regular Russians.
To be fair the Russians were treating their own people as if they were disposable. I’d say I don’t know what the North Koreans were expecting. Probably not much of anything because they are so poorly informed on things that don’t pertain to supporting the regime. It’s bad enough here in the west. Over there it’s a much worse.
Military is probably the only social lift in their society, so they could’ve wanted to butter the odds of them and their family getting higher in hierarchy by gambling on what they didn’t know.
