Engineers said to be supporting missile launches and reports of North Koreans killed near Donetsk

North Korean military engineers have been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles, and North Koreans operating in occupied areas of Ukraine have already been killed, senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul said.

There are dozens of North Koreans behind Russian lines, in teams that “support launcher systems for KN-23 missiles”, a source in Ukraine told the Guardian.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, last year travelled to Russia for a summit with Vladimir Putin where the two men bolstered their deepening ties with a secret arms deal.

Pyongyang’s ammunition shipments were vital in allowing Russian forces to advance in a grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine this summer. But it appears increasingly clear that the agreement went beyond supplying materiel.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    Imagine being an educated Russian 45 year old conscript fighting next to malnourished north koreans.

    • TheMightyCanuck@sh.itjust.works
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      26 days ago

      Are we assuming the Russian conscript has a higher degree of education than the north Korean?

      They’re both totalitarian shitholes shoving their own version of lies down their citizens throats.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        There are FAR, FAR more well educated Russia snthan there are North Koreans, let alone Educated North Koreans.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          There were reports of Russian soldiers in Ukraine not knowing what an “Automatic Toilet” was. They’re grabbing people from so far in the boonies, that they bring in buckets of water to flush their toilets. That also means that either Russian barracks don’t have toilets or they’re shipping their forces to the front lines without any training.

            • realitista@lemm.ee
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              25 days ago

              He means they only know how to shit in a hole in the ground. That kind of poverty tends to not go hand in hand with the top educational institutions.

        • realitista@lemm.ee
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          25 days ago

          Yes but I doubt they are getting sent to Ukraine. The ethnic minority regions that Russia keeps dirt poor are sent 70:1 in some cases compared to recruits from Moscow. And I’d bet it’s a big ratio also between the well educated and poorly educated in Moscow too.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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          25 days ago

          North Korea has a pretty good IT program

          They deal with malware while Russia deals with social media campaigns

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        26 days ago

        They are worlds apart yes. Russia actually has an amazing academia network that is suffering greatly from Putins politics. Most recently seen by hundreds of academics having to stop their collaboration with CERN because of the war. Compared to NK, Russia is just a normal country with lots of IT and science nerds.

        However if you look at the US and their rural MAGA population, it shows that there can just be a massive rift within the population. And thats what you have in Russia too i would assume.

        • realitista@lemm.ee
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          25 days ago

          Much of the respect we have for Russian education goes back to the excellent STEM education they had in the Soviet days. This has largely been eroded away in modern times, and much of the technology and infrastructure they have are being held together by Soviet educated older folks.

      • Frog@lemmy.ca
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        26 days ago

        I would assume that considering Russians actually have internet.

        I’m also going to assume the Russian soldiers are atleast 6 inches taller on average since South Korean soldiers are that much taller than North Korean soldiers.

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      This isn’t new, there have been north Korean work camps in inside of Russia for decades. It’s convict leasing on a troubling international level.