NNA - Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked North Korean troops for fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, after North Korea on Monday confirmed the deployment for the first time. 

In a statement Monday from the Kremlin, Putin hailed the heroism and dedication of the North Korean fighters, who he said “shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters, defended our Motherland as their own.” 

Russia on Saturday said its troops have fully reclaimed the Kursk region that Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise incursion last year. Ukrainian officials denied the claim. 

U.S., South Korean and Ukraine intelligence officials have said North Korea dispatched 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last fall in its first participation in a major armed conflict since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. But North Korea hadn’t confirmed or denied its reported troop deployments to Russia until Monday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decided to send the combat troops to Russia under a mutual defense treaty he and Putin signed in June 2024, the North's Central Military Commission said in a statement carried by state media. The treaty — considered the two countries' biggest defense agreement since the end of the Cold War — requires both nations to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked. 

The statement cited Kim as saying the deployment was meant to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”--agencies 

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