Intelligence sources say a battalion of 3,000 has been secretly training to fight against Ukraine

A battalion of 3,000 North Korean soldiers will shortly join Russian troops in fighting Ukraine, marking Pyongyang’s full entry into the war.

Intelligence sources said the unit has been secretly training in Russia’s Far East ahead of deployment as part of a Russian airborne regiment.

“They are called the Buryat Battalion,” a senior Ukrainian military source told Politico. Buryatia is a remote region of Russia bordering Mongolia that the Kremlin has targeted heavily for military recruitment.

The Kyiv Independent quoted another Western intelligence source claiming that North Korea had sent 10,000 soldiers to join the Russian army.

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  • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.worldEnglish
    321·
    1 month ago

    Another story I saw says that North Korean troops were spotted in the Russian military. How could an observer know they were Korean? Were they wearing a Korean uniform? And if so, why haven’t we seen any photos of that? Ukrainians have cameras, right?

    Is this just a case of Ukrainians not being able to tell the difference between Buryats and Koreans?

    Edit: Come to think of it, it’s more likely a case of Americans not being able to tell the difference between Buryats and Koreans.

    I can only imagine their shock when they eventually learn that Russia, a country that spans all of north Asia, has Asians in it.

    • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.worldEnglish
      316·
      1 month ago

      Part of me thinks “Surely American military intelligence must know there are different ethnic groups in Russia”.

      But then I remember how the invasion of Iraq happened in part because the Americans didn’t understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Iraqis.

        • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.worldEnglish
          28·
          1 month ago

          I sometimes think of something to say after my original comment.

          And is “comrade” supposed to be a dig of some kind? Because it isn’t.

          • Valmond@lemmy.worldEnglish
            42·
            1 month ago

            Oh that’s why you reported my post. I just thought you were a communist tankie.

      • Saleh@feddit.orgEnglish
        61·
        1 month ago

        The US understands very well the different religious factions. The way the West Asia region was carved into countries by the colonial powers is identical to what they did in Africa. Deliberately creating countries with internal conflicts that can be exploited for destabilizing them.

        However it is easy to tell apart Siberian ethnicities from Koreans. You can also tell apart Eastern Europeans from Western Europeans, leave alone the fact that Korean is an entirely different language from Russian or the languages of the region.

        Edit: regarding the languages. In Buryat people speak dialects of Mongolian. Mongolian has a shared ancestry with Turk languages.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolic_languages