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Defense Minister of Ukraine Rustem Umerov confirmed "small skirmishes" of the Ukrainian military with North Korean forces, which was the first official clash with the North Korean military.
He said this in an interview with KBS News on Tuesday, November 5.
Umerov confirmed the first official confrontation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the North Korean military, but explained that it was not coordinated with the participation of all forces. According to him, since North Korean soldiers disguise themselves as Buryats and mix with the russian army, it is necessary to go through identification procedures to determine the exact number of victims or prisoners of war.
"Can this engagement be seen as the official beginning of North Korean engagement? Yes, I think so, it was an engagement. We are making contact with the North Korean military, but we believe there will be more engagements in the coming weeks and we will analyze and review them respectively," the Minister of Defense said.
According to the calculations of the Ministry of Defense, five divisions with approximately 3,000 servicemen in each, deployed in the northeast, east and southeast, will be deployed on the front with a length of about 1,500 kilometers. Up to 15,000 North Korean troops will be deployed in Kursk, Umerov emphasized.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on November 4, Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said that the Defense Forces of Ukraine inflicted the first casualties on North Korean servicemen.
On November 4, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that, according to Ukrainian intelligence, there are already 11,000 North Korean troops in the Kursk Oblast of the russian federation.
On October 31, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, Serhii Kyslytsia, stated that generals of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) are on the territory of the aggressor country of russia.
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