North Korean soldiers in Russian invasion: Have they entered the combat yet?

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The US expects thousands of North Korean troops to enter the combat against Ukraine "soon," the Pentagon head said over the weekend. 

Lloyd Austin stated that about 10,000 of Pyongyang’s soldiers are believed to be stationed in Russia’s border region of Kursk, where they are currently being "integrated into the Russian formations."

"Based upon what they've been trained on, the way they've been integrated into the Russian formations, I fully expect to see them engaged in combat soon," Austin told reporters during a stopover in Fiji on Monday.

Ukraine’s General Staff says North Korean military personnel have already participated in combat against Ukraine's defence forces.

“These are mostly general military units. They are disguised as the indigenous population of the Far East," Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Anatolii Barhylevych said.

"They also have the appropriate documents and have been trained to conduct operations in the European sector," he added.

South Korea also said earlier that North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region have already been engaging in combat, adding that “their deployment to battlefields had been completed" as of 13 November. 

Kyiv says Moscow, alongside the North Korean soldiers, has now amassed around 50,000 troops in order to push Ukrainian forces out of Russia after the surprise incursion. 

Russia has also recruited hundreds of mercenaries from Yemen to join its invasion of Ukraine, according to an FT report. The FT said its journalists spoke to the recruits who had been promised "lucrative jobs, high salaries," and even Russian citizenship. 

However, after arriving in Russia with the help of a Houthi-linked company, they were "forcibly inducted into the Russian army and sent to the front lines in Ukraine," according to the report.