The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kirill Budanov, stated that the DPRK military is currently not directly participating in Russia’s open hostilities against Ukraine. He said this in an interview with Lb.ua, specifying that the North Korean contingent on the territory of the Russian Federation numbers about 8,500 people.
According to Budanov, these military personnel are distributed among the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th special forces brigades of Russia. Their activity is limited to participation in artillery shelling of border areas and control of drones, but this does not take place within the framework of full-fledged combat operations.
“They are all on the territory of the Russian Federation, their combat activity is limited, let’s say, to participation in artillery strikes on the border and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles, but all this takes place within the framework of the exchange of experience. That is, it is like practical training for them. And about a thousand personnel are now in the Kursk region,” the head of intelligence explained.
At the same time, Budanov emphasized that the DPRK continues large-scale arms supplies to Russia. Earlier, intelligence also reported that by the end of 2025, Moscow plans to recruit about 12,000 North Korean workers to work at enterprises in Tatarstan that produce drones in order to compensate for the shortage of personnel.
