A Russian officer ordered sixteen scouts to attack Ukrainian machine guns

As many as 8,000 North Korean troops have been deployed in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday. U.S. intelligence officials indicate that the North Koreans will join fighting along the 270-square-kilometer salient that Ukrainian forces carved out of Kursk starting in August. “We expect this to happen in the coming days,” Blinken said.

The North Korean deployment could strengthen Russian attacks in Kursk and provide valuable experience for Pyongyang’s military, which has not fought a major war in 70 years. But it is also possible that the deployment will have no impact on the front line, and that many North Koreans will just die without anyone learning anything from it.

It is not without reason that the Kremlin sent North Korean reinforcements to Kursk. Last month, Russian forces launched a counterattack on the Ukrainian salient in the oblast. The Russians have advanced a little on the western side of the salient. But on the eastern side they are being slaughtered by Ukrainian forces firing from fortifications that the Ukrainians apparently captured from the Russians in August.

The Russian Navy’s 810th Marine Infantry Brigade is responsible for the main counterattack along the eastern edge of the salient. The 2,000-man brigade has suffered heavily in recent days. On or just before October 24, the brigade’s 382nd separate battalion sent 16 scouts to investigate Ukrainian positions, apparently around Russkaya Konopelka or nearby settlements.

“Our goal was to discover the enemy,” one of the scouts explained in a video translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “We did that,” said the scout. He and his fifteen comrades radioed back the location of a Ukrainian machine gun position, believed to be nestled in one of the many defensive earthworks that advancing Ukrainian forces advanced on the surprised Russian garrison of Kursk in August.

But then the battalion or brigade commanders did something unexpected. They ordered the lightly armed scouts to attack the machine gun nest directly. “The enemy had enormous numerical superiority,” the scout explained. “We had four groups of four people. Two groups ceased to exist.”

The survivors threatened mutiny. “We don’t want to serve in this battalion anymore,” the scout said. “We will not be cannon fodder.”

Help arrives in the form of several regiments of North Korean troops. Whether the North Korean soldiers will succeed where the Russian Marines failed in Kursk remains to be seen. But it is an ominous sign that the Russians have assigned only one interpreter for every 30 or so North Koreans, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington DC.

It is possible that the Russian commanders do not expect to work closely with the North Korean platoons. Instead, Russian officers could simply issue simple, broad orders — and hope for the best. That kind of blunt command and control left the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade scouts dead in a pointless direct attack on the entrenched Ukrainians. It could also kill many North Koreans.

According to ISW, Pyongyang is keen for its troops to gain combat experience. If so, the war is essentially a very dangerous exercise for the North Koreans in Kursk. The risk, of course, is that the North Koreans will learn what those Russian Marines recently learned: that their commanders are cruel, ignorant, or both—and that following stupid orders from uncaring officers is bad for your health.

“If the Russian command decides to use North Korean personnel as ‘cannon fodder’ and not take advantage of the specialist training of certain North Korean units,” ISW mused, “the victims that the North Korean troops will certainly undermine. whatever battlefield lessons Pyongyang hopes to learn.”

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