North Korean soldiers began returning home in body bags over the weekend, fighting alongside large numbers of Russians for the first time.

“Today we have preliminary data indicating that Russia has begun using North Korean soldiers to carry out attacks. Quite a number of them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.

Ukraine’s military intelligence service (GUR) reported that the North Koreans, along with elite Russian marines and airborne troops, infiltrated Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has launched a counter-invasion.

“At a position in the Kursk region, soldiers of the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – North Korea) army were actually ‘covered’ by (first-person view) drones,” GUR said in a statement, estimating that the Russians and the combined losses of the Koreans. On the first day of fighting, the number of North Koreans reached 200.

Al Jazeera was unable to confirm the death toll.

Eight people were reportedly killed when North Koreans mistakenly fired on Chechen troops. Ahmet camp.

“Language barriers remain a difficult barrier to management and coordination,” GUR said.

Many of the losses came as North Korean forces tried to retake the Russian villages of Plekhovo, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and Vorozhba and Martynovka, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Russian territory. (Martynovka) happened.

Ukraine’s Magyar Birds, a marine force specializing in unmanned aerial warfare, released a video on Sunday purporting to show a North Korean killed in Kursk. Drone footage hovers over a row of bodies with their faces covered.

The force said in a statement: “After each wave, 4 to 5 Koreans would arrive in off-road vehicles, line up the mutilated bodies, as in the video, and cover the faces of the deceased. “

Other Ukrainian forces fighting in Kursk are proud to highlight their success against North Korea, whose presence Kyiv views as a major escalation in the conflict.

Ukrainian special forces Faust Force reported killing or wounding 33 North Koreans in Kursk using light drones.

“Although the Koreans have a rather strange way of walking in the fields, they are trained to shoot back at drones and try to escape from them. They have not adopted the Russian tactic of freezing when FPV (drone) appears,” the the force wrote on its Telegram channel.

Ukraine’s 8th Special Forces Regiment said it killed 50 North Korean soldiers and wounded 47 others in Kursk from Saturday to Monday.

In addition, the 95th Polisian Airborne Assault Brigade claimed to have killed more than 50 soldiers and wounded 100 others in two days. “However, we will only claim these are South Korean mercenaries after a South Korean prisoner recounts his difficult fate,” the brigade wrote on its website. Its telegram page.

“After suffering heavy losses, North Korean forces began setting up more observation posts to detect drones,” Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Tuesday.

Zelensky posted that Russia was employing horrific tactics to cover up the losses of North Korean soldiers.

“The Russians also tried to…literally burn the faces of the killed North Korean soldiers after fighting our people,” he wrote on Telegram.

He added: “South Koreans have no reason to fight and die for Putin. Even after they die, all that awaits them is Russia’s ridicule.”

There has been no statement from Russia or North Korea regarding the first casualties of South Korean mercenaries.

Operations on Russian territory

Ukraine has also successfully carried out sabotage and assassinations behind enemy lines.

From Friday to Saturday night, saboteurs burned a Su-30 fighter jet on the tarmac of the Krymsk airport in Krasnodar Krai.

That night, Ukraine attacked the “Steel Horse” fuel production and unloading facility in Russia’s Orel region, saying the facility was used to supply the military.

The day before, they had burned and damaged three locomotives used to transport war supplies to Ukraine.

Ukraine has also been responsible for two high-profile assassinations.

On Tuesday morning, a member of the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was assassinated. General Igor KirillovHead of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces. Kirillov was blown up while walking past a parked motorcycle filled with explosives on Ryazan Street in the eastern suburbs of Moscow.

Kirillov allegedly ordered the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers. His assistant, Major Ilya Polikarpov, was also killed.

Ukrainian agents were implicated in the assassination of a prominent Russian military scientist on Thursday.

Mikhail Shatsky was found dead in Kuzminsky Forest Park in Moscow. He was reportedly involved in upgrading Kh-59 missiles to Kh-69 levels and writing artificial intelligence software for the Russian military’s drones.

Shatsky is the software director at Mars, the Moscow Research and Design Bureau, a subsidiary of Russia’s state atomic energy agency Rosatom.

ATACMS may be making a difference

Ukraine may also have succeeded in pushing Russian aircraft far enough away from the front lines to hinder their ability to launch glide bombs.

The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russia launched 431 glide bombs in the first 12 days of December, and more than three times that number in the first 12 days of November.

Ukrainian news outlet Agentstvo News quoted OSINT analyst Oliver Alexander as saying: “The sharp decline in the number of guided air bomb attacks may be due to Ukraine allowing the use of Western long-range missiles deep into Russian territory.”

“According to him, the threat of using ATACMS forced the Russian aviation department to move Su-34 fighter-bombers to airfields more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the front line, i.e. outside the destruction zone of Western missiles,” Agentstvo said.

U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the use of ATACMS for deep strikes on Nov. 17, two days after Ukraine confirmed its first use of the missiles. The next day it used British and French Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles.

Data from the Ukrainian General Staff show that the number of Russian glide bombs dropped steadily in the second half of November.

According to the General Staff, the average number of glide bombs dropped per day in November was 110. Agentstvo said that number had dropped to around 40 in December.

“As a result, the number of glide bombs currently launched by the Russian military is only one-third of the total number of glide bombs launched by the Russian military in November 2024,” said the Institute for Warfare (ISW), a think tank in Washington.

Glide bombs are important because they have a huge blast radius, and Ukraine credits them with helping Russia win the battle for the city of Avdievka in February. Thereafter, Russian forces advanced slowly but steadily, forming a 40 km (25 mi) salient west of Avdievka.

Still, US President-elect Donald Trump said he opposed Biden’s decision.

“I don’t think they should allow missiles to go 200 miles into Russia. I think that’s a bad thing,” Trump said at his first news conference since the election. “I think it’s a very stupid thing to do.”

Trump said he would work to reach a ceasefire agreement in 2025.

Demetries Andrew Grimes, a former US naval officer, pilot and diplomat who supports Trump, told Al Jazeera that the ATACMS decision “eliminates the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump may Potential bargaining chips for use in future peace negotiations.”

Some criticized Biden for granting permission it’s too late.

“The long period of indecision has given Russia time to move some of its logistics facilities further away,” said Minna Alander, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “In any case, the important thing is that Ukraine is now able to attack Russian territory, Because they can finally fight in a meaningful way,” she told Al Jazeera.

Grimes believes that this decision “increases the urgency for Russia to ensure victory on the battlefield, as Russia now faces the threat of long-range attacks on critical military infrastructure.”

The ISW estimates that Russia’s advance rate doubled in November from October, averaging 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) per day. The ISW said it had looted a total of 2,356 square kilometers (910 square miles) of Ukrainian land by 2024.

Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked the armed forces at a Defense Ministry board meeting on Monday for “liberating” 189 settlements this year. He said it was a “landmark year in achieving the goals of special military operations.”

The latest use of ATACMS occurred on the morning of December 11, when six missiles struck Russia’s Taganrog airport, to which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “there will be a response.”

Russia’s air war

Russia launches airstrikes indiscriminately against Ukrainian cities and its military.

Russia launched what the ISW said was its largest-ever airstrike on Ukraine on Friday, using 94 missiles and 193 kamikaze drones.

Ukraine shot down 81 missiles and 80 drones, and electronic warfare systems disoriented another 105 drones, but Ukrainian energy operator DTEK reported serious damage to five of its plants.

“Each missile targets a specific energy facility,” Zelensky said. “The timing of this strike coincides with the cold wave. This is a deliberate, cynical campaign of terror by Russia, specifically targeting our people.”

For the second time in two weeks, Zelensky told the Joint Expeditionary Force meeting that Ukraine needs 12 to 15 air defense systems to protect its skies, more than the five systems promised at a NATO summit in Washington in July. Increase this number.

On December 10, Zelensky requested the purchase of 10-12 Patriot systems, up from the minimum of seven he requested in April. His latest numbers don’t refer specifically to the Patriots system.

In a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Zelenskiy ruled out the possibility of “a mere suspension of hostilities… as a temporary or uncertain situation”. We need a strong common position from all partners and we need real peace. “