“Here they are. The boys from North Korea.”
That is how a male voice describes what appears to be a group of soldiers filmed in a video geolocated by The New York Times to a military training site in the Russian Far East village of Sergeyevka, in the region of Primorsky Krai. The person filming the video then walks toward the crowd, which is gathered near the entrance of a green and white building.
In recent days, videos have been circulating on social media that appear to show North Korean troops in Russia.
For weeks, South Korea and Ukraine have been saying that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has dispatched troops to help with Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. The United States publicly agreed with that assessment on Wednesday, saying that Pyongyang had moved at least 3,000 soldiers to several training camps in the Russian Far East, not far from the North Korean border. Even President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appeared to acknowledge the presence of Pyongyang’s forces in his country.
On Thursday, Ukraine claimed 12,000 North Korean troops were now in Russia, adding that some had arrived in the Kursk region, where Ukraine has held territory since staging an incursion in August.
Two American officials said Friday that several thousand of the North Koreans had arrived in western Kursk. John Kirby, the national security spokesman at the White House, said Friday that it was possible that some North Korean troops could be deployed there. The Times could not independently confirm the soldiers’ deployment there.
