Ukrainian president calls on countries to step in before troops sent to Russia by Pyongyang reach battlefield

Ukraine’s president urged allies to stop “watching” and take steps before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield, while the army chief said his troops were facing “one of the most powerful offensives” by Moscow since the full-scale war began.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised the prospect of a pre-emptive Ukrainian strike on camps where the North Korean troops are being trained and said Kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine can’t do it without permission from allies to use western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.

“But instead … America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start attacking Ukrainians as well,” Zelenskyy said in a post late on Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

  • SoJB
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    2 months ago

    ? I was told right here on Lemmy that the NK soldiers are functionally useless, tactically inept, slowing down the Russian troops, have never seen anything with a transistor before, and are supplying shells with 80% misfire rates?

    • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      It could be true, I guess. It could be Western propaganda too. It doesn’t take much to reason a country as underdeveloped and isolated as NK lacks an effective military.

      However, maybe they don’t need to be particularly good to further Russia’s interests. NK army may be good enough as cannon fodder or purely for defence purposes, as border guards or patrols.

      • andallthat@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Russia and Ukraine are two countries that have thrown everything they had at each other: from good soldiers, to inmates, to good people who’d probably never held a weapon before.

        At this point I imagine that having troops who are alive and actual trained soldiers, not emotionally and physically drained (if not outright mutilated) by years of fighting is a big advantage

        If I was taken from my home and suddenly sent to fight for my country, no matter how full of patriotic love I might be, one North Korean child with a knife would be enough to take me out.

    • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Functionally useless just like the average Russian soldier, lacking equipment, food, training and likely suffering of medical complications. The thing is, in meat wave assaults it doesn’t matter. In fact their cheapness is a quality of its own.

    • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      It was supposed to be South Korean fake news to manufacture consent for invasion of NK