Star Metro - N. Korean troops 'withdrawn' from Kursk front line: Ukraine

Russia again refused to comment on claims foreign troops were fighting alongside their own soldiers. Instead, it accused Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk of committing atrocities.

Western, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies say Pyongyang deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russian forces fighting in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock cross-border offensive in August.

Kyiv captured dozens of border settlements in the operation -- the first time a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since the Second World War -- in an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin.

The North Korean deployment, never officially confirmed by Moscow or Pyongyang, was supposed to reinforce Russia's army and help them expel Ukraine's troops.

Nearly six months on, however, Ukraine still holds swathes of Russian territory, something President Volodymyr Zelensky sees as a key bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Moscow.

"Over the past three weeks, we have not seen or detected any activity or military clashes with the North Koreans," Oleksandr Kindratenko, spokesman for the Special Operations Forces, told AFP.

"We believe that they have been withdrawn because of the heavy losses that were inflicted," he added.

Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region.

Zelensky has published footage of interrogations with what he said were North Korean prisoners captured by his army on the Kursk front.

Ukrainian officials have said wounded North Korean troops were blowing themselves up with grenades rather than being taken alive.

- Atrocity allegations -

Kyiv and the West had denounced their deployment as a major escalation in the three-year conflict.

Ukraine says around 2,000 Russian civilians live in areas under its occupation, mostly cut off from contact with relatives on the other side of the new front line.

Discontent has been growing in the Russian border region at the failure of local authorities to secure their return to Moscow-controlled territory or provide updates on their status.

Asked earlier Friday about reports the North Korean soldiers had been withdrawn, the Kremlin declined to comment.

"There are a lot of different arguments out there, both right and wrong," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"It's not worth commenting on them every time," he said.

But on Friday, Moscow did accuse Ukrainian troops of killing 22 people when they occupied a Russian village, including eight women who were allegedly raped before being executed.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on January 19 it was investigating the killing of "at least seven civilians" in the village of Russkoye Porechnoye, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The village, in Russia's Kursk region, has been retaken by Moscow.

A spokesman for Ukraine's military command in the Kursk region, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, dismissed the allegations in a response to AFP.

Peskov accused the international community of ignoring Russia's accusations.

"This must be talked about and shown, despite all the deafness of the international community and its unwillingness to pay attention to such atrocities," he told reporters.

- Russian advances -

Despite Ukraine's hold on part of the Kursk region, Russia has been advancing elsewhere across the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front.

Moscow's army said Friday that it had captured another village, Novovasylivka, in eastern Ukraine, as its forces advance on a logistics hub and a road that is crucial for military supplies.

Novovasylivka is close to the key hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, and to the internal border with Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, which so far has been spared ground combat.

Russia in 2022 said it was annexing the Donetsk region, despite not having it under full control, but has not publicly made territorial claims on Dnipropetrovsk.

O.Gauthier--SMC