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Today, there are a lot of interesting updates from the Kursk direction.
Here, the fragile alliance between Russian and North Korean forces begins to unravel as mounting losses and reckless tactics fuel bitter resentment. In a shocking turn, rogue North Korean soldiers took matters into their own hands, deliberately targeting their supposed allies, exposing the deep fractures within the combined Russian and North Korean operation in Kursk.
The goal of the Russian forces in this area is to ensure that the offensive does not lose momentum and does not culminate. This is because their forces have finally approached Malaya Loknya close enough to initiate a new phase in their counteroffensive, forcing North Korean forces to adapt to completely new combat conditions. The agglomeration of settlements in this area, including Malaya Loknya, provides much better defensive positions for the Ukrainian forces, which the North Koreans will have to meet in direct close quarters combat, which would undoubtedly result in very high losses. So far, North Koreans suffered around four thousand casualties in one and a half months of fighting, and at this rate, it is expected that they will run out of soldiers by April.
The Russian commanders understood this and attempted to complement the North Korean infantry-based meat waves with Russian infantry, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and close air support. In the long term, a source with the United States Department of Defense shared that a new agreement between Russia and North Korea was set to deploy an additional eleven thousand North Korean soldiers to Kursk within the next two months to replace current losses.
Combat footage reveals the continued suicidal tactics used by the North Koreans, which is slowly leading to the complete annihilation of their contingent. The lack of leaves on the trees during winter and the large movements of North Korean soldiers made them easy targets for Ukrainian drones to correct precision artillery fire with cluster munitions, leading to massive losses.
Further assaults over open fields directly exposed them to Ukrainian machine gun fire from fortified and concealed positions within the forests. Furthermore, the fact that Ukrainians sport far superior equipment, such as night vision goggles and thermal vision sights, gave them an upper hand in every direct engagement, resulting in North Koreans coming under precise small-arms fire, without being able to properly fight back. All of this contributed to North Korean forces losing over a third of their initial force in just seven weeks of fighting.
Such tremendous losses and lack of adequate fire support from the Russians created an outrage among surviving North Korean soldiers, who were traumatized from battles where they often had to walk over the corpses of their comrades. Their anger was further fueled by the footage, which revealed that Russians collected and tried to hide the bodies of dead North Korean soldiers to downplay their losses. As a result of this, a group of three North Korean soldiers expressed their outrage about the disrespect they faced by deliberately attacking a group of Russian marines, killing five of them in the following altercation. Russian news sources published an image of the wanted list issued for the three North Korean soldiers who conducted the ambush, reporting that they are currently still at large, with the search for the perpetrators ongoing.
Overall, the poor treatment and even worse tactics of North Korean soldiers by the Russian command in Kursk fueled heavy resentment amongst the North Korean soldiers, causing some of them to go rogue and kill several Russian soldiers. Continuation of poor treatment and the disregard for the life of North Korean soldiers will, at this rate, both lead to the complete annihilation of the North Korean expeditionary force of twelve thousand soldiers, along with further deteriorating relations between the fighting two parties. Russian soldiers will also likely become increasingly unwilling to support their North Korean allies, due to the sheer number of cases where North Koreans fire on Russian soldiers, both deliberately and by accident. However, instead of solving the issue at hand, Russian forces plan to deploy an additional batch of eleven thousand North Korean soldiers to Kursk to compensate for the loss of the current contingent within the coming months.
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