Zelenskyy says Russia is treating the first North Korean soldiers well, but it won’t last

North Korean Defense Minister No Kwang Chol with his Russian counterpart Andrei Belousov in Pyongyang, North Korea, on November 30, 2024.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia is treating the first batch of North Korean soldiers sent to aid in its war against Ukraine well, but that it won’t last.

Zelenskyy told Japanese news agency Kyodo News on Sunday that Russia was treating the North Korean troops well in order to try to attract tens of thousands more.

But he predicted that the troops would at some stage be sent to the front lines and that it was “indisputable” that Russian President Vladimir Putin would ultimately use them as “cannon fodder.”

Officials in the US, Ukraine, and South Korea claim that North Korea has sent thousands of troops to aid Russia.

Zelenskyy said there is evidence that about 12,000 North Korean troops have been deployed so far, and Dmytro Ponomarenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Korea, said last month that the number of North Korean troops sent to Russia could reach 15,000, with troops rotated out every two to three months.

That could mean around 100,000 North Korean soldiers serving in Russia within a year, he said.

North Korean troops have been deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, where Ukraine made a surprise counteroffensive in August, seizing hundreds of square miles of Russian territory.

Zelenskyy said during the interview with Kyodo News that North Korean troops had been killed there, confirming previous reports.

In June, the Pentagon warned that North Korean troops would be treated poorly by Russia, in response to initial reports that North Korea was considering sending Russia some of its military personnel.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at the time that “if I were North Korean military personnel management, I would be questioning my choices on sending my forces to be cannon fodder in an illegal war against Ukraine.”

Russia has been accused of treating its own soldiers badly during the conflict.

Zelenskyy also warned Sunday that the use of North Korean troops during the conflict could be dangerous for Asia, since those soldiers would get trained by Russia and would get knowledge about fighting in a modern war, in areas like using drones.

Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, told B-17 that even if the soldiers North Korea sends are well trained by their own standards, “I think their training still would be lacking in terms of the modern battlefield they have in the Russia-Ukraine war.”

He added: “I think that it’s safe to assume that they might be used as expendable infantry or just thrown as a mass of people.”

Bielieskov also said that while the estimated number of up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers in Kursk right now was not huge by the standards of the war, it might be enough to make a difference against Ukraine on a single front, if that’s how they are used.

Last month, South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Yong-Hyun, said that North Korean troops would likely be sent to the war’s hot spots.

He said that Russian officers are “likely to send the North Korean platoons to the most dangerous and difficult areas.”

According to South Korean intelligence, Russia is paying about $2,000 a month for each North Korean soldier.

But North Korean military experts told B-17 that the soldiers themselves are not likely to see much of that, with the state likely pocketing most, if not all, of the money.