- Russia is training North Korean troops to use combat drones, a Ukrainian official told BI.
- Andrii Kovalenko said the combat skills "pose a threat to both Ukraine and South Korea."
- Ukraine claims 11,000 North Korean soldiers are fighting alongside Russia in Kursk.
Russia is now training North Koreans in drone operations and other modern warfare techniques, a Ukrainian official told Business Insider.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, said in a statement to BI: "Russia is training North Korean soldiers to operate strike UAVs and reconnaissance drones."
He said there were also plans to send Russian instructors on first-person-view drones to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, for further training.
In a post earlier this week on X, Kovalenko said the troops were also receiving training on Lancet drones.
This training, taking place under live-combat conditions, "poses a threat to both Ukraine and South Korea, as some of these soldiers will transfer their skills back to North Korea," he told BI.
BI was unable to independently confirm his statements.
Kovalenko's remarks come as Ukraine calls on its international allies to react more strongly to North Korean troops joining forces with Russia.
He said that once they're back in North Korea, those receiving the training could use their skills "for future terrorist actions in the border areas with South Korea."
Late last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that up to 8,000 North Korean troops had been moved to the Russian region of Kursk, and he predicted that they would enter the fighting shortly.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put that number at 11,000. According to The Kyiv Independent, he said: "We see an increase in the number of North Koreans, and we do not see an increase in the reaction of our partners."
Experts have told BI that the direct-combat experience North Korean troops are expected to get while fighting Ukraine is a massive boon for the secretive state, which has not seen major combat since the 1950s.
Training with drones, in particular, would allow North Korea to catch up quickly with a military capability that has become pivotal to modern conflicts.
Hundreds of thousands of inexpensive FPV and strike drones are being used in Ukraine, and they're increasingly cropping up in fighting in the Middle East.
Last month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said future wars would be fought with artificial-intelligence drones and urged the US military to do away with what he called "useless" tanks.
Kovalenko said Monday that the first North Korean troops had already come under fire in Kursk.
In his remarks to BI, he said that since then, "daily battles" with North Korean troops had occurred, with Ukraine regularly shelling their positions.
South Korea recently said it was mulling sending weapons to Ukraine, which experts told BI could significantly help — but it has long been reluctant to aid in the conflict.
In October, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, modified his country's constitution to redefine its southern neighbor as a "hostile state" and blew up roads connecting the two territories.
The increase in hostilities comes after deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.