Russia has trained its troops for a potential attack on Japan and South Korea, according to a report by the Financial Times. The British outlet reviewed 29 Russian military documents and uncovered a strategy devised by Moscow to target the two Asian nations.
South Korea's military has said that North Korea is preparing to continue aiding Russia in its war with Ukraine, despite casualties.
Russia developed offensive plans targeting civilian and military sites in Japan and South Korea in the event of a war with NATO, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 31, citing documents shown to the outlet by Western sources.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said there have been over 3,000 North Korean casualties in Kursk. South Korea reported over 1,000 casualties last week. Newsweek has not verified either figure. Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow has acknowledged the presence of North Korean troops in Russia.
“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address yesterday, calling the losses “significant.”
Leaked Russian military documents reveal plans to target civilian infrastructure like nuclear power plants and tunnels, raising concerns about potential war crimes.
Russian forces are advancing in the east, slowly but surely, and they are shrinking Ukraine’s partial hold of the border region of Kursk
"Through various sources of information and intelligence, we assess that North Korean troops who have recently engaged in combat with Ukrainian forces have suffered around 1,100 casualties," the JCS said in a statement.
Despite their elite status, North Korea's "Storm" troops were ill-prepared for the war, South Korea's National Intelligence Service said.
A deepening political crisis in South Korea has not diminished the military readiness of 28,500 troops stationed in the Asian state, a U.S. official said on Friday, but Washington is closely monitoring the situation.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he will implement the “toughest” anti-U.S. policy, less than a month before Donald Trump takes office as U.S. president