KYIV: Ukraine believes North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russia’s army on the Kursk front line have been “withdrawn” after suffering heavy losses, a military spokesman told AFP on Friday. Russia again refused to comment on claims foreign troops were fighting alongside their own soldiers. Instead, it accused Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk of committing atrocities. Western, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies say Pyongyang deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russian forces fighting in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock cross-border offensive in August.

Kyiv captured dozens of border settlements in the operation—the first time a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since the Second World War—in an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin. The North Korean deployment, never officially confirmed by Moscow or Pyongyang, was supposed to reinforce Russia’s army and help them expel Ukraine’s troops. Nearly six months on, however, Ukraine still holds swathes of Russian territory, something President Volodymyr Zelensky sees as a key bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Moscow.

“Over the past three weeks, we have not seen or detected any activity or military clashes with the North Koreans,” Oleksandr Kindratenko, spokesman for the Special Operations Forces, told AFP. “We believe that they have been withdrawn because of the heavy losses that were inflicted,” he added. Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. Zelensky has published footage of interrogations with what he said were North Korean prisoners captured by his army on the Kursk front. Ukrainian officials have said wounded North Korean troops were blowing themselves up with grenades rather than being taken alive.

Atrocity allegations

Kyiv and the West had denounced their deployment as a major escalation in the three-year conflict. Ukraine says around 2,000 Russian civilians live in areas under its occupation, mostly cut off from contact with relatives on the other side of the new front line. Discontent has been growing in the Russian border region at the failure of local authorities to secure their return to Moscow-controlled territory or provide updates on their status.

Asked earlier Friday about reports the North Korean soldiers had been withdrawn, the Kremlin declined to comment. “There are a lot of different arguments out there, both right and wrong,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It’s not worth commenting on them every time,” he said. But on Friday, Moscow did accuse Ukrainian troops of killing 22 people when they occupied a Russian village, including eight women who were allegedly raped before being executed.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said on January 19 it was investigating the killing of “at least seven civilians” in the village of Russkoye Porechnoye, about 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. The village, in Russia’s Kursk region, has been retaken by Moscow. A spokesman for Ukraine’s military command in the Kursk region, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, dismissed the allegations in a response to AFP. Peskov accused the international community of ignoring Russia’s accusations. “This must be talked about and shown, despite all the deafness of the international community and its unwillingness to pay attention to such atrocities,” he told reporters.

Russian advances

Despite Ukraine’s hold on part of the Kursk region, Russia has been advancing elsewhere across the 1,000-kilometre front. Moscow’s army said Friday that it had captured another village, Novovasylivka, in eastern Ukraine, as its forces advance on a logistics hub and a road that is crucial for military supplies. Novovasylivka is close to the key hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, and to the internal border with Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, which so far has been spared ground combat. Russia in 2022 said it was annexing the Donetsk region, despite not having it under full control, but has not publicly made territorial claims on Dnipropetrovsk.

Flashpoint Ukrainian city

Meanwhile, Russia said on Saturday it had captured a village flanking the eastern flashpoint city of Toretsk in Ukraine as Kyiv said four people had died in overnight Russian strikes. The Russian defense ministry said its troops seized the village of Krymske in the northeastern suburbs of Toretsk, located in the eastern Donetsk region and the scene of intense fighting in recent months. The Russian army is slowly but steadily advancing in Donetsk, despite heavy human and material losses. On Tuesday, Ukrainian troops in the region said there was intense fighting in urban areas of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, a strategically important military hub on the front line.

DeepState, a group of Ukrainian military analysts, says Russian forces have been in the centre of the two contested cities for months. Overnight, at least four people died in Russian strikes on the central Ukrainian city of Poltava and the northeastern city of Kharkiv. Ukrainian authorities had issued air raid alerts for the entire country just before 7:00 am on Saturday, warning of missile and drone threats in several regions. Ukrainian emergency services said on Telegram a “missile strike on a residential building” in Poltava had killed at least three people and wounded at least 13, three of them seriously. They published images showing firefighters searching through the smouldering ruins of a building.

‘Russian terror’

In Kharkiv, a Russian drone shot down by air defence fell on a residential area, killing a woman and injuring four other people, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram. The Russian defense ministry said its overnight strikes had hit gas and energy infrastructure that supply Ukraine’s “military-industrial complexes”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks showed his country needed more defense systems to protect itself from “Russian terror”.

He said: “Last night, Russia attacked our cities using various types of weapons: missiles, attack drones, air bombs. “Every air defense system, every anti-missile is a lifesaver. It is very important that our partners act... and increase pressure on Russia, “Zelensky said, adding that damage had been reported in six regions—Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia. - AFP