North Korean troops ‘enter’ battle; Trump win throws Ukraine aid in doubt

Ukraine says it has started fighting North Korean troops in Kursk, but could eliminate them in their front-line bases if allowed.

North Korean troops are said to have clashed with Ukrainian forces in the Russian region of Kursk for the first time on Tuesday, the same day American voters re-elected Donald Trump for president, an isolationist who has argued against sending further military aid to Ukraine.

“The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his evening address. “We must do everything to make this Russian step to expand the war – to really escalate it – to make this step a failure.”

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said the clashes were “small scale” and that the North Korean troops were not fighting as separate formations but were embedded in Russian units disguised as Buryats from the Russian Federation.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR) had said Russia transferred more than 7,000 North Korean military personnel “to areas near Ukraine” in the last week of October – a much higher figure than the 3,000 North Korean soldiers South Korean and United States intelligence had said were in Russia’s Kursk region on October 30.

GUR said Russia had transported the troops on 28 Russian aircraft and armed them with Russian mortars, assault rifles and machineguns.