Zelenskiy Claims North Koreans Suffer Major Losses In New Kursk Fighting

An explosion is seen in the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike on January 3.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said North Korean soldiers, fighting alongside Kremlin forces in Russia’s Kursk region, had suffered heavy casualties over the past two days amid mounting reports of losses for the Asian nation’s forces fighting some 6,700 kilometers from home.

"In battles yesterday and today [January 4] near just one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

"And that is significant," he added, citing information relayed from Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskiy.

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'Everything Went Black': Deadly Russian Strike On Chernihiv Destroys Homes

The report could not independently be verified.

The size of a battalion can vary in different military alignments, often ranging from 300 to 1,000 troops.

North Korean military support is coming at a critical time in the war. Russia is seeking to overpower an undermanned and under-resourced Ukrainian infantry and gain territory before its own manpower and resources become constrained.

Russia has lost more than 600,000 soldiers in the nearly three-year war, the Pentagon said in early October. It has burned through so much war material that it is struggling to replace its artillery and missile needs amid sweeping Western sanctions.

Zelenskiy on December 23 said more than 3,000 troops, or about a quarter of the North Korean special forces sent to Russia, had been killed or injured, though he acknowledged it was difficult to determine exact numbers.

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Western and Ukrainian intelligence and military sources estimate that Pyongyang has deployed about 11,000 troops to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces still occupy territory after launching a mass cross-border incursion in August.

In his address, Zelenskiy also said "fierce battles" were raging along the 1,000-kilometer front line, with the "hottest spot" near the important logistical hub of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk region with a prewar population of 64,000.

Zelenskiy also said a rescue operation was under way near Chernihiv in north-central Ukraine, where a Russian missile assault had damaged some 40 buildings.

Local officials on January 3 said one person was killed and five were injured when three missiles hit a residential site in the area. A picture posted on social media by Chernihiv regional Governor Vyacheslav Chaus showed the shattered facade of a private home.

The person killed was an associate professor at the Institute of Postgraduate Education, according to Suspilne Chernihiv. Local media said the 72-year-old's house was burned down after it was hit by Russian shelling in March 2022. Since then, he had been living in a barn.

Five people were injured in an earlier drone attack in the Kyiv region, and four were hurt when the town of Slovyansk near the front line in the Donetsk region was shelled, officials said. All four were hospitalized. Among the injured is a 2-year-old boy, whose mother was injured in the attack and was in serious condition, said Mayor Vadym Lyakh.

Russian forces used a guided aerial bomb, which struck a private sector of Slovyansk at about 3 p.m. local time, a police representative at the scene told RFE/RL.

Zelenskiy said on X that in the first three days of 2025, Russia had launched 300 attack drones and nearly 20 missiles on Ukrainian targets. Most, he said, had been downed or intercepted, but he said the attacks had killed and injured people, prompting him to renew his plea for his Western allies to send additional air-defense systems

“We are already preparing for the upcoming meeting in Ramstein,” he said, referring to the next session of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on January 9 in Germany.

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He said Kyiv will be working with partners there to spur additional arms to help fight off Russian drones, guided bombs, and aircraft that have been attacking crucial infrastructure as the winter cold deepens.

On January 3, a White House spokesman said Ukraine can expect more announcements in coming days about additional U.S. security assistance as President Joe Biden’s term in office winds down on January 20.

The announcements would follow a $5.9 billion package of additional military and budget assistance for Ukraine announced by the Biden administration last week amid concerns that the new administration under President-elect Donald Trump will significantly reduce or halt arms supplies to Ukraine in order to push Kyiv to negotiate a peace settlement with Russia.

Meanwhile, Russian newspaper Izvestia said a freelance journalist working for the media outlet was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike near the city of Donetsk on January 4.

Izvestia and a group of journalists traveling with Aleksandr Martemyanov said the man was killed when a drone hit their civilian automobile "for from the line of contact."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service