Ukrainian Official: We're Now Fighting North Koreans

Ukrainian troops have for the first time engaged with North Korean units that were recently deployed to help Russia in the war with its neighbor, Ukraine's defense minister said Tuesday. Another Kyiv official said Ukraine's army fired artillery at North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk border region. The comments were the first official reports that Ukrainian and North Korean forces have engaged in combat, following a deployment that has given the war a new complexion as it approaches its 1,000-day milestone. The AP notes that neither claim could be independently confirmed, but it gives specifics of those claims:

• The Ukrainian and North Korean troops engaged in "small-scale" fighting that amounted to the start of Pyongyang's direct involvement in Europe's biggest conflict since World War II, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told South Korea's public broadcaster KBS in an interview.
• North Korean soldiers are mixed with Russian troops and are misidentified on their uniforms, Umerov was quoted as saying by KBS. That makes it hard to say whether there were any North Korean casualties, he said.
• Umerov reportedly said he expects that five North Korean units, each consisting of about 3,000 soldiers, will be deployed to the Kursk area.
• Meanwhile, Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation branch of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said "the first North Korean troops have already been shelled, in the Kursk region." He provided no further details.

(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)