Exclusive: North Korea is prepared to send another 30,000 soldiers to help Russia

There are movements of Russian military aircraft and troops to come from Siberia to Europe. Kim Jong-un is preparing to give new help to friend Vladimir Putin

North Korea is expected to triple the number of its troops fighting for Russia on the front line with Ukraine, sending another 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers to help Moscow, according to an evaluation of the Ukrainian authorities’ secret services.

The troops will be able to arrive in Russia in the coming months, according to the evaluation seen by CNN, joining at 11,000 sent in November, which helped repel Ukraine in the Russian region of Kursk. According to Western authorities, about four thousand of these North Korean soldiers were killed or injured during the detachment, but Pyongyang’s cooperation with Moscow has been developing ever since.

The Ukrainian evaluation seen by CNN says the Russian Ministry of Defense is able to provide “the necessary equipment, weapons and ammunition” with the objective of “greater integration in Russian combat units”. The document adds that “there is a great possibility” that North Korean troops come into combat in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia “to reinforce the Russian contingent, including during large-scale offensive operations.”

The evaluation of the Ukraine Defense Information Agency also says that there are signs that Russian military aircraft are being rebounded to transport personnel, reflecting the vast venture of traveling tens of thousands of foreign troops through Siberia Russa, which borders North Korea in the southwestern extreme.

Possible preparations for the new detachment, including the arrival of a ship linked to last year’s detachment to a Russian port and cargo aircraft at Sunan North Korean airport, were detected in satellite images obtained by CNN.

North Korea initially sent 11,000 soldiers to Russia in the fall of 2024 in great secret, and Russian President Vladimir Putin only confirmed the detachment in late April.

In October, North Korean soldiers were photographed to receive equipment for the front lines at the Sergeevka military base in the Primorskyi Krai region.

A month later, a Russian Ropucha -class ship attracted in the port of Dunai, near Nakhodka, 95 kilometers southwest and can carry up to 400 soldiers, analysts.

The same type of Ropucha Troop Transportation Ship was backwards again on May 18 in the same port of Dunai, according to CNN satellite images by Open Source Center, a non -profit organization based in the UK specializing in defense and security -related source information.

Flight patterns also suggest that the move of some more troops may be underway. Open Source Center provided CNN satellite images from Sunan Airport in North Korea on June 4, where load aircraft, possibly IL76, were rolling on the track – the same type of airplane used at last year’s trips. Although the images do not show what the ship and airplanes are being used, movements may suggest a consistent pattern with what analysts observed last year.

“Satellite images show a Russian personnel transport ship to Dunai in May, and activity at Sunan Airport in May and June,” says Joe Byrne, senior analyst at Open Source Center. “This seems to indicate that the routes previously used to transport North Korea troops are active and can be used in any future large -scale personnel transfer.”

Jenny Town, a senior member and director of the Korean program at Centro Stimson, says the Ukrainian assessment of up to 30,000 sounded “high … but they can certainly reach that number. They will not be elite soldiers. Kim Jong-un said he is willing to do so, so it depends on what Russia asks.”

Town adds that between 10,000 and 20,000 “seems more realistic” and that North Korea can send the troops slowly by phases. “It is rumored that the Russian generals have been in North Korea training the troops,” he says.

Ukraine Defense Minister Rustem Umarov said last Thursday that Kiev suspected that could be sent more North Korean troops, but added that the country’s leader Kim Jong-un has risked putting his own in danger by exposing so many elite troops at high low-line low rates. “Russia’s use of North Korean elite troops demonstrates not only growing dependence on totalitarian regimes, but also serious problems with their mobilization reserve,” said Umarov. “Along with our partners, we are monitoring these threats and we will respond in accordance.”

On Friday, Ukrainian Armed Forces Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russia was gathering 110,000 soldiers near the city of Pokrovsk on the front line in preparation for a possible offensive against the strategic population center.

Sergei Shoigu, one of Putin’s leading advisers, who was once his defense minister, visited Pyongyang on June 17 – a trip from Putin’s orders and his second visit in a fortnight, the Russian state news agency Tass said. During the visit, Shoigu announced the sending of a thousand North Korean sappers and five thousand military construction workers to Russia, to unrest and “restore the infrastructures destroyed by the occupants” in the Kursk region, according to Tass.

The South Korea National Information Service (NIS) informed the legislators in Seoul that North Korea began selecting staff to be sent abroad, which could happen in July or August, according to the remarks of Lee Seong-kweun legislator. Lee Seong-kweun underlined Russia’s public announcement from the sending of six thousand North Korean workers for the cleaning of Minas Gerais and military construction. It is not clear if NIS shares the evaluation of Ukrainian secret services that the detachment could reach 30,000 men.

Russian media also gave an intensification of cooperation. A video of a Russian television and policy host Marina Kim, published on Telegram two days after Kremlin admitted the role of North War Korea in late April, shows intensive preparations and long-term accommodation of a North Korean unit. CNN and the Center for Information Resilience based in the United Kingdom geographically located the facilities on a field on the outskirts of Postoyalye Divory, a village located 10 kilometers east from the city of Kursk.

The six-minute video shows a Russian military instructor to declare that North Koreans aged 23 and 27 arrive “physically well prepared.” He added, “As combatants, they are not worse than ours. The enemy runs away first.”

The Russian trainer discusses with Kim a translation sheet of Russian to Korean’s basic military terms. It is not clear whether North Korean interns are newly arrived or the remnants of the 11,000 sent last year. The reporter also visits a network of trenches where North Koreans live with basic comfort articles such as Korean red pepper, and hand-written posters who declare in Korean “revenge for our dead comrades” over their bunk beds.

Two other videos published by TASS suggest greater integration of North Korean soldiers into the Russian Armed Forces than previously registered. The first exhibition of North Korean troops to the front line in Kursk was as a distinct and separate unit due to the linguistic barrier with the Moscow troops, according to evaluations of Ukrainian officers.

A TASS video shows North Korean and Russian troops to clean buildings together in a melee combat workout, and another shows North Koreans to receive hunter training used to combat the threat of Ukrainian drones.

Additional troops represent a significant development in the conflict and a sign that the leader of North Korea is reinforcing his support to Moscow. Kim Jong-un was seen in the North Korean state media to inspect the North Korean special forces on May 14, which led some analysts to suspect that the visit was related to a future detachment. The revelation of what seems to be an important North Korean detachment is part of a one-month CNN investigation into North Korea’s growing role in supporting the Moscow War.

Ukrainian secret services have also provided the most complete record of the 82 North Korean ballistic missile attacks KN-23 and KN-24, revealing that one of them was responsible, in January 2024, for the death of 11 civilians in Pokrovsk, and their intense use in February this year. Its pattern of use was described in detail by CNN.

North Korean ballistic missiles were fired at the Ukrainian territory in three distinct series, each lasting a duration of about two months, according to data from Ukrainian secret services. Many missiles hit civilians, including a Pokrovsk attack in January 2024 that killed 11 people. A first missile, unique, was released in August 2023.

CNN also obtained from an employee of the direction of the secret defense services of Ukraine training manuals of the North Korean artillery, translated into Russian, a sign of the ubiquity of weapons and the growing interoperability between the Armed Forces of Moscow and Pyongyang.

The manuals came at the same time as an increasing number of North Korean artillery videos on the front line has been seen online and a report of 11 UN member states said last month that Pyongyang had sent at least 100 ballistic missiles and 9 million artillery projectiles to Russia in 2024.

The report also echoed the statements of the South Korean military in March, according to which three thousand North Korean soldiers had been sent to Russia earlier this year.

Town from Centro Stimson says Pyongyang via a long -term benefit in the fact that Moscow is in debt to her. “The more ‘blood debt’ there is between them,” he said, “the more North Korea will benefit in the long run, even if it is making short -term sacrifices.”