These days Russia and North Korea are writing a new battlefield history together. North Korea has dispatched some 12,000 troops to fight in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The soldiers are believed to be some of North Korea’s most elite,

After a battle in Russia's snowy western region of Kursk this week, Ukrainian special forces scoured the bodies of more than a dozen slain North Korean enemy soldiers. Among them, they found one still alive.

Ukraine has found “irrefutable evidence” of North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against his country, president Volodymyr Zelensky said this week as he announced the capture of two North Korean soldiers.

North Korean troops have been deployed to bolster Russian forces in the Kursk border region with Ukraine, where they are gaining battlefield experience despite initial heavy losses.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered to return them to North Korea should its leader, Kim Jong Un, arrange for Ukrainian soldiers to be released.

North Korea has instructed its soldiers fighting in Russia and Ukraine to commit suicide in the face of capture, and evidence suggests they're doing as told, according to South Korean and Ukrainian officials.

A Pentagon spokesperson said Monday the deployment of North Korean troops to a Russian front-line region makes the fighting "much harder" for Ukrainian forces.