On Monday, North Korea said the deployment was carried out “by the order” of Kim Jong-un under the terms of a mutual defence treaty signed with Russia.
“The operations for liberating the Kursk area to repel the adventurous invasion of the Russian Federation by the Ukrainian authorities were victoriously concluded,” North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA reported.
Putin expressed his gratitude to North Korea and Kim on Monday, saying in a statement released by the Kremlin that he would always honour “Korean heroes” who had fought for shared freedom with their Russian brothers in arms.
Kim notably announced that a monument honouring the fallen soldiers would soon be erected in Pyongyang, with flowers laid at their tombs, in an acknowledgement of war casualties.
