The Ukrainian Armed Forces are preparing for a meeting with the DPRK army — NYT

The Ukrainian command warned the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who are in Kursk region, about the imminent participation of DPRK soldiers in hostilities. It is reported by The New York Times.

"They warned us about the attack in the near future. Probably in the next few days," said Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kholodkevich, deputy commander of the 61st Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukrainian and American officials said last week that several thousand North Korean troops had arrived in the Kursk region. This is part of a larger contingent of up to 10,000 people that North Korea is preparing to deploy on the Russian side of the front, Kiev and Seoul reported.

According to military experts, this is too little to make the weather on the battlefield as a whole, but potentially enough to help Moscow clear its territory in the Kursk region from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

"As their number grows, I expect that their influence will be seen in the progress of Russia's sustained counteroffensive," said John Forman, a former British military attache in Moscow and Kiev.

On Friday, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, said that North Korean troops were expected to join the fighting earlier this week.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have already released a Ukrainian-Korean phrasebook for their servicemen so that they can appeal to the North Koreans and urge them to surrender, a Ukrainian officer told the publication on condition of anonymity.

It is noted that in recent weeks Russia has regained several settlements in the Kursk region and, according to military experts, the deployment of North Korean soldiers there could strengthen Russian counterattacks. The complete liberation of the territory occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine by Russia will undermine one of the main goals of Kiev's invasion — "the seizure of lands that it can use as a lever to push Moscow to negotiate an end to the war."

However, how the North Koreans will behave on the battlefield remains to be seen, experts say. The North Korean army has not participated in wars since the 1950s, and if the soldiers are sent to the front line, they will face battle-hardened Ukrainian servicemen, the newspaper writes.

The Pentagon does not have data on the type of troops that North Korea is sending to Russia, and their weapons, said today the Deputy press secretary of the US Department of Defense Sabrina Singh. Coordinating them with the Russian troops will also prove difficult because they do not speak the same language, have undergone different training and are not familiar with the terrain where they will fight, said retired Colonel Viktor Kevlyuk, an employee of the Kiev Center for Defense Strategies.

"This could become a huge headache for the Russian army, which is not used to having large foreign units under its command," said the former German ambassador to the And the chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, Russia plans to allocate one interpreter for every 30 North Korean soldiers in order to better coordinate its actions with Russian troops on the battlefield. This statement cannot be verified by independent sources, the newspaper emphasizes.

Kevlyuk expects that North Korean troops will be used in offensives against the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region.

"North Korean units will storm the most fortified positions of the Ukrainians, and Russian regular troops will secure the captured facilities and borders. Russian tactics are unchanged: to realize numerical superiority in personnel with artillery support," the expert said.

Kiev claims that Russia has deployed about 50,000 troops in the Kursk region and does not report on the number of Ukrainians stationed there. An independent military analysis shows that Ukraine has deployed about 30 thousand soldiers. An additional 10,000 North Korean troops may allow Russia to crush the Ukrainian forces, experts believe.

"Given their numbers, it is possible that they will have an impact on the conduct of hostilities in certain areas," Colonel Kholodkevich said about the North Korean troops.

In the meantime, Foreman expects the North Koreans to "remain on the defensive and strengthen the front line," leaving some of the Russian soldiers free for offensive operations. If they are used for direct attacks, "the reliability of North Korean troops will be questioned by the Russians and their use could put Russian troops at risk," he added.