Ukrainian forces described a different kind of enemy, fighting with unfamiliar tactics and little option to retreat.

A thousand North Korean troops who have been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia have been killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war with Ukraine, officials have said. Western officials have told the BBC that 36 per cent of North Korean forces fighting in Russia had been killed, injured or captured by mid-January.

These days Russia and North Korea are writing a new battlefield history together. North Korea has dispatched some 12,000 troops to fight in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The soldiers are believed to be some of North Korea’s most elite,