Shortly after Joe Biden decided that Ukraine should have the same right to attack targets in Russia that Russia has to attack targets in Ukraine, an ATACMS strike on a Russian ammunition depot in Bryansk Oblast received a lot of attention; Ukraine Launches First Missile Attack Using New Authority From Biden, Putin Responds in Typical Putin Way. Rather, predictably, Putin made noises about using nuclear weapons, and the usual people defecated themselves. What was notable was the way Putin responded to this one attack but totally ignored a much larger attack involving a dozen British-made Storm Shadow missiles farther west in Kursk Oblast. This is the largest single use of Storm Shadow cruise missiles in the war and indicates something important was at the location.
The reason for the lack of notice now seems to have been simple. The Russians didn’t want to draw attention to the attack because it wounded at least one senior North Korean general and killed Lieutenant General Valery Solodchuk, First Deputy Commander of the Leningrad Military District.
A senior North Korean general was wounded in a recent Ukrainian strike in Russia’s Kursk region, Western officials said Thursday.
It is the first time Western officials have said that a high-ranking North Korean military officer has become a casualty in the escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict.
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The Storm Shadows launched Wednesday struck an estate in Marino, a town in the Russian-controlled part of the Kursk region, according to videos geolocated by the Center for Information Resilience, an online investigation organization, that were verified by The Wall Street Journal. Marino is about 20 miles from the front lines in the province.
The estate contains vast gardens and an underground area with domed ceilings lined with bricks and is run by the Russian government, according to its official website. Loud whooshes followed by thunderous explosions that set off car alarms could be heard on video taken by bystanders and shared on social media.
A Russian blogger said that several North Korean servicemen were present at a command post there.
Last month, North Korea agreed to send some 12,000 troops to fight on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine (see North Korea to Send Up to 12,000 Troops to Fight for Russia in Ukraine). Recent reports suggest that the number may rise to 100,000. Some of those troops were equipped as though they were Russians from the Far East, but some were used in Kursk as North Korean units.
The first image of North Korean forces’ casualties on the front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine surfaces alongside news of senior NK general’s wounding on the frontline.
Reports have indicated that approximately 10,900 North Korean soldiers have been integrated into Russian… pic.twitter.com/tNGGAw2Oxw
— dan linnaeus (@DanLinnaeus) November 22, 2024
Ukraine has told the UN Security Council that it has identified three North Korean generals operating in the war zone.
