Videos appear to show North Korean troops in Russia
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Ukraine claimed 12,000 North Korean troops were now in Russia, adding that some had arrived in the Kursk region.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SEOUL/NEW YORK - “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 district of Primorsky Krai. The person filming the video then walks towards 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 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 Oct 23, 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 Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to acknowledge the presence of North Korean forces in his country.
On Oct 24, 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.
On Oct 25, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it was possible that some North Korean troops could be deployed to Kursk, according to Reuters. The Times could not independently confirm whether any North Korean troops are in Kursk.
The footage from Sergeyevka was posted on Telegram by Astra, a Russian independent media organisation, along with another clip that showed soldiers milling around, chatting and smoking.
The men are wearing a standard set of Russian fatigues known as the all-season field uniform, which is made by a Russian company called BTK Group, according to military analyst Dmitry Kuznets from Meduza, another independent news outlet in Russia.
In addition to military clothing, the North Korean troops have received weapons and forged identification documents, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. That would allow them to pose as people from eastern Siberia, where the indigenous Buryat and Yakut people bear Asian facial features.
In another video, released by a Ukrainian government agency, the Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security, dozens of soldiers can be seen standing in a long line inside a building.
The Ukrainian agency, which was established to counter Russian disinformation, said the video showed North Korean soldiers preparing for deployment at a training facility in Sergeyevka.
The Ukrainian agency was not willing to provide the original video file or details about the video’s provenance to the Times. The Times could not confirm the exact location or time the video was filmed.
However, the interior matches military cafeteria design in Russia and Ukraine. It is possible the video was filmed at a building in the Sergeyevka complex; the windows resemble those seen on a building adjacent to the military barracks, where the apparent North Korean soldiers were recorded milling around.
There are also signs of increased activity at the building: Fencing between the building and the barracks was recently taken down, and rubbish and cars are visible in satellite imagery outside the building for the first time in years.
The footage contains the voices of soldiers speaking with a distinctively North Korean accent, said Mr Kim Seung-chul, a defector from the North who heads North Korea Reform Radio, a Seoul-based station that broadcasts outside news into North Korea.
The troops are seen taking turns filling their military packs with supplies that appear to have been unpacked from boxes with BTK Group’s logo. Mr Kuznets said he was able to identify sleeping bags, jackets, pants, shirts and suspenders in the footage.
It remains unclear what kind of training the North Korean troops were receiving in Russia nor is it known where – or if – they could be deployed. “We’re still, again, watching closely to see what’s afoot,” Mr Kirby said. NYTIMES
