#Kursk Region

As the United States and Russia prepare for peace talks in Alaska on August 15, Ukraine’s top military spy is sounding the alarm over an unexpected beneficiary of the war in Europe: North Korea.

Marking one year since the launch of the cross-border campaign, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi detailed the operation’s toll: over 77,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, including around 4,000 North Korean nationals fighting alongside Russia.

Everyone was looking at the Russian-occupied Kherson. Ukraine struck near Kharkiv and pulled off what experts now regard as one of the most well-executed military operations since World War II.

In the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an unlikely player has joined “Russia’s coalition of evil.” Laos, a landlocked one-party authoritarian state sandwiched between NATO -aligned Vietnam and Thailand, is sending its sappers to Russia’s Kursk region under the guise of humanitarian demining.