Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Monday more than 3,000 troops from North Korea have been killed so far fighting next to Russian forces.

North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia were given fake military documents with Russian names and birthplaces, the Ukrainian military said, amid claims from Kyiv that Russia is trying to conceal the presence of foreign fighters on the battlefield.

Russia is deploying major resources to take back the entire region of Kursk, which Ukraine invaded in early August. Some 1,000 North Koreans have been sent to the area to assist 50,000 Russian soldiers,

Secretive North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but unlike in Russia, the Korean People's Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat. Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness,” says Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

For years, North Korea’s military has helped its leader, Kim Jong-un, keep control of his people and provide a buffer against the country’s sworn enemy, South Korea. With 1.3 million members, the North’s army is among the world’s largest conventional armed forces.

More than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war, claims Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has, for the first time, sent combatant units abroad, to aid Russia in the war in Ukraine. As noted in the Joint Statement on the DPRK’s Deployment of Troops to Russia this development indelibly connects the Indo-Pacific and European theaters,

On Monday, December 23, the Ukrainian president claimed on his X account (formerly Twitter) that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed” or wounded” on the battlefield. This is far from the estimates of the South Korean army general staff,