North Korea is expected to send reinforcements to Russia’s Kursk Oblast, mainly gun and rocket artillery units, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview with The War Zone magazine published on Jan.

North Korea will send reinforcements to join its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine in the next two months, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing a senior U.S. Department of Defense official.

It will mostly be missile and artillery troops who typically operate hundreds of tubed and rocket artillery systems as well as the KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles Pyongyang has already provided Moscow,

Ukrainian forces described a different kind of enemy, fighting with unfamiliar tactics and little option to retreat.

A thousand North Korean troops who have been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia have been killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war with Ukraine, officials have said. Western officials have told the BBC that 36 per cent of North Korean forces fighting in Russia had been killed, injured or captured by mid-January.

Western officials have told the BBC that North Korean troops have already suffered nearly 40% casualties in the fighting in Russia's western Kursk region, in just three months. The officials, who spoke on grounds of anonymity,

The report highlights that North Korean soldiers have developed unique battlefield tactics, such as using a soldier as bait to shoot down drones or detonating grenades, holding it under the neck with one hand on the pin when the Ukrainian military approaches to avoid capture when severely wounded.