> is russia using north korean soldiers or not? > yes or no? no. russia is not "using" dprk soldiers. russia has a long history of working with dprk, military exercises; same weapons; etc. there are 12,000 dprk soldiers in russia right now, for normal training and military exercises. they are deployed in kursk so that they can get some combat experience (dprk armed forces have no combat experience, many years since the last war). they are not "used" in the sense they are not deployed to the kursk front. they are deployed for training, and get some experience with hunt-and-kill the small pockets of ukies remaining in kursk reqion. they are dprk soldiers, paid by dprk, not russia. for the war, russia has 2.5 million professional soldiers and 1.5 reservists, the last mobilisation seeking 130,000 obtained 335,000 due to volunteers. they do not need soldiers from any other country. even when zelenskyy invaded kursk, the intent was to "force russia to redeploy donbas forces to the kursk. total fail, russia deployed soldiers from russia without touching the donbas.
Task Force Z