KIM Jong-un has hailed his bond with Vladimir Putin – saying Russia and North Korea had shared “blood, life and death” in the Ukraine war.
The North Korean despot has thrown thousands of troops into the meatgrinder war to fight alongside the Russian troops in Ukraine.
In a New Year greetings published by the state-run KCNA news agency, Kim said 2025 was a “really meaningful year” for the bilateral alliance that was consolidated by “sharing blood, life and death in the same trench”.
Kim said that North Korea’s bond with Russia is “invincible” and added that it would last forever in the letter he penned to the Russian president.
North Korea only confirmed in April that it had deployed troops to support Russia’s military campaign against Ukraine.
Pyongyang also admitted that its soldiers had been killed in combat.
Pyongyang’s state TV and Kim’s propaganda machine KCNA reported that North Korean soldiers made an “important contribution” to help the Russians flush out Kyiv’s troops from Kursk.
It said Kim deployed “sub-units of our armed forces” to Russia as part of a treaty with Moscow.
The troops “participated in the operations for liberating the Kursk areas,” the report added.
North Korea “regards it as an honour to have an alliance with such a powerful state as the Russian Federation,” KCNA said.
Numerous reports showed a disturbing pattern beginning to emerge of North Korean troops being sent out on suicide missions on behalf of Russia.
They were being sent to jog through snowy no-man ’s-land and fatally soak up Ukrainian ammo.
Earlier this month, Pyongyang acknowledged that it had sent troops to clear mines in Russia’s Kursk region in August 2025.
At least nine troops from an engineering regiment were killed during the 120-day deployment, Kim said in a speech on December 12 marking the unit’s homecoming.
The tyrant wept over the coffins of his soldiers whom he sent to die in Putin’s meatgrinder war.
Kim hosted a ceremony which remembered the soldiers taken out by Zelensky’s brave army – and things got emotional for the tyrant.
Thousands of North Koreans stood to attention in the vast auditorium, with Kim in the front row.
Images of Kim draping the North Korean flag over soldiers’ coffins were broadcast on a giant screen at the front while a huge orchestra played emotional music.
Women in long dresses sang passionately, and there was even a harp player stationed on the stage.
North Korea is estimated to have sent a total of 14,000 troops, including 3,000 reinforcements to replace its losses, according to Ukrainian officials.
Kim sent Putin his New Year’s greetings a day after the North Korean leader ordered officials to step up missile production.
In addition to sending troops to fight for Russia, Pyongyang has sent artillery shells, missiles and long-range rocket systems.
In return, Russia is sending North Korea financial aid, military technology and food and energy supplies, analysts have said.
South Korea, the US and their allies are concerned that Russia could even transfer sensitive technologies that can enhance North Korea’s nuclear program.
Pyongyang has increased missile testing in recent years — aimed at improving precision strike capabilities, analysts say.
In January, Ukraine claimed to have captured two North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region.
They were among the first 11,000 of Kim’s troops drafted into Putin’s illegal war after the pariah pair sealed a pact to unite against the West.
The military card of one of the captured men shows that the Russians gave the North Koreans fake identities with the pretence that they were from a remote region of Siberia.
One of the captives was given a false Russian identity of Antonin Ayasovich Arankyn, born 03.10.1998 in the republic of Tuva.
His document shows him to be single, with secondary higher education and the profession of a tailor.
The ID was issued by the Military Commissariat of the Pyi-Khemsky district, of Tuva, a mountainous Russian republic bordering Mongolia.
The other had no documents.
The SBU believes the pair are North Koreans after saying that the captive soldiers do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian.
The soldier with the Russian identity said this was issued to him when he was brought to fight in the war.
Images have shown a line of dead North Korean troops laid out in the snow moments after they joined the fight on the front lines.
