After two years of intense courtship, progressing from warm words to vital weapons, summits in Pyongyang, to 11,000 soldiers on the ground in Russia, the burgeoning relationship between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un was signed in blood last week when the first stories emerged of North Korean casualties on the Ukrainian battlefield.
On Monday, the GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, claimed that 30 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in fighting around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha and Martynovka in the Kursk region – a figure echoed by a spokesman for the US National Security Council.
