All 12,000 North Korean troops sent for Putin will be ‘killed or wounded within three months’

All 12,000 troops sent by North Korea to bolster Vladimir Putin’s dwindling force could be killed or injured in the next three months, analysts say.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which has been monitoring developments on the front lines of the invasion of Ukraine since it began in February 2022, said in an assessment on January 16 that “the entirety of this North Korean contingent in the oblast Kursk could be killed or wounded in about twelve weeks.”

In early January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,800 North Korean soldiers have been killed or injured in Kursk so far.

They reportedly first found themselves on the battlefield in early November, and significant fighting took place from December onwards.

The ISW estimates that the North Korean contingent is suffering losses of about 92 men per day, and will be completely gone by mid-April if they “continue to suffer similarly high casualty rates in the future.”

The group added: “North Korean forces are likely to continue to suffer higher numbers of injuries and deaths in action – as is typical of armed conflict – and it is unclear if and when wounded North Korean soldiers will return to combat.”

Fighting in Russia’s Kursk region has intensified, with Ukrainian forces taking out entire columns of tanks and leaving the battlefield littered with the bodies of Russian and North Korean soldiers, horrifying footage reportedly shows.

Desperate to reclaim the region, part of which was first captured by Kiev’s forces in August and has been defended by Ukraine ever since, Vladimir Putin has sent wave after wave of troops to die as “cannon fodder.”

All 12,000 troops North Korea has sent to bolster Vladimir Putin’s dwindling forces could be killed or injured in the next three months, analysts say.

The ISW estimates that the North Korean contingent is suffering losses of about 92 men per day

The ISW estimates that the North Korean contingent is suffering losses of about 92 men per day

The North Korean soldiers will be completely gone by mid-April if they 'continue to suffer a similarly high casualty rate in the future'

The North Korean soldiers will be completely gone by mid-April if they ‘continue to suffer a similarly high casualty rate in the future’

So exhausted by the speed with which they killed their enemies, Ukrainian machine guns are being replaced regularly, according to reports.

One soldier compared the attack to the bloody sieges of eastern Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut, saying that “after two hours (arms operators) couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Here the Russians must take this territory at all costs, and are putting all their strength into it, while we are giving everything we have to hold it,” Sergeant Oleksandr, 46, a leader of the Ukrainian infantry platoon, told the New York Newspaper New York. Times.

“We are holding on, destroying, destroying, destroying – so much that it is even hard to comprehend.”

Aiming to retake the city of Malaya Loknya, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the region, Putin’s forces reportedly launched a series of massive combined attacks involving some 50 armored vehicles and hundreds of soldiers.

Ukrainian forces reportedly decimated the columns by disabling the lead vehicles with landmines and drone strikes, forcing those behind them to stop.