While North Korea has been supplying weapons to Russia for some time, the arrival of troops is a major escalation in its involvement in the war of Ukraine.
The first official evidence of large numbers of North Korean troops entering Russia was provided by the South Korean government, who last week published a press release outlining the increasingly close military cooperation between the two states.
Image: A map of sites in the Russian far east linked to the reported presence of North Korean soldiers
According to the press release, an initial contingent of 1,500 North Korean special forces troops were transported on Russian naval ships to the port city of Vladivostok.
The South Koreans provided two high-resolution satellite images showing what they say are these troops in two sites in Russia.
The first shows a crowd of what the South Korean government estimates is 400 people assembled in an open space within a Russian military site close to the town of Ussuriysk, 98 kilometres north of Vladivostok.
Image: Image released by South Korean intelligence purportedly showing North Korean troops at a Russian military site
The second image shows a smaller number of people, which the South Korean government state are around 250 North Korean soldiers.
Image: Satellite image released by South Korean intelligence purportedly showing North Korean troops at a Russian military site
This image was captured further north than the first. It shows an area that appears to be a military site close to the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian far east.
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Footage circulating online
Amid reports of North Koreans entering Russia, several videos circulated widely.
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While Sky News cannot confirm they show North Korean troops, one shows a group of soldiers of east Asian appearance. The person filming the video states they are North Korean, referring to them as ‘allies’.
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This video has been geolocated by Sky News to the town of Sergeyevka in the Russian far east.
A second video filmed nearby shows a group of soldiers training in a field at the same site.
Filmed from over a wall, the footage is too grainy to allow the soldiers to be identified visually, however, many have claimed it shows North Korean troops.
A third video, released by the Ukrainian government, shows troops being equipped. While it is not possible to geolocate this footage, the presence of boxes marked in Russian has been cited as evidence this shows North Korean troops in Russia.
What satellite images can tell us
While currently available videos do not tell a full story, more can be learned from satellite imagery.
An image captured by Maxar of the site in Sergeyevka shows the sudden appearance of trenches on the grounds of the base in early October.
Image: Equipment visible in a military site purportedly housing North Korean troops in Russia. Pic: Maxar
Later in the month, equipment can be seen assembled in an area in the south of the site, showing it has remained in use. This coincides with the reported arrival of troops in the area and the appearance of the videos, and fits with reports that the North Koreans are training in the area.
Available satellite imagery appears to show that a nearby training site in Lifarevka is also currently in use.
A comparison of low and high-resolution imagery captured over the month of October shows several huts appear to have been renovated at the site.
Image: Renovated huts and evidence of training activities at a Russian military site. Pic: Maxar
Training trenches and signs of activity can be seen in high-resolution images captured on 24 October.
Fighting in the Ukrainian frontlines often involves the use of trenches resembling those seen at both sites.
A North Korean flag appears on the frontline
Amid reports of North Korean troops being prepared for fighting in Ukraine, an image showing the North Korean flag next to that of Russia went viral.
Image: A North Korean flag flying in Russian-held territory close to the Ukrainian frontline
Sky News has geolocated this to a former mining facility between the towns of Hirnyk and Tsukuryn in eastern Ukraine.
The site sits close to the frontline, with Tsukuryn being captured by the Russians in early October.
While the presence of the North Korean flag does not necessarily signal their arrival in Ukraine, it does suggest that frontline Russian forces are aware of North Korea’s increasing involvement in the conflict.
A deepening relationship between North Korea and Russia will also deepen China’s growing sense of unease about how close these two countries are becoming.
If thousands of North Korean troops head to Russia and on to the battlefield in Ukraine the conflict widens, drawing in an unstable and unpredictable partner in North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un.
China’s President Xi Jinping does not like an uncertain outcome.
This deployment has all the hallmarks of one.
If North Koreans are killed in war, pictures of dead soldiers could lead to impulsive action from Kim.
South Korea is seriously alarmed. But there’s little it can do about it. The worry is South Korea may be tempted to get more directly involved in the war on behalf of the enemy of their enemy – Ukraine.
The Korean Peninsula needs stability right now, the atmosphere has been highly charged all year.
When Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty with a mutual defence clause in Pyongyang in June, it was unclear what this would mean on the ground.
Now we know. It could mean boots on the ground.
China shares its border with both Russia and North Korea.
If these two nuclear armed countries start fighting alongside each other, President Xi has every reason to be alarmed.
Weapon deliveries
North Korean support for the Russian war effort is not a new phenomenon.
In October 2023, the White House released imagery showing a Russian ship collecting containers of what the Americans claim were weapons from the North Korean port of Rason.
Prior to this time, the port at Rason had largely been empty. Sky News found there was little activity at its piers until the late summer, after which an increasing number of ships were visible throughout the autumn and winter.
Image: A ship at a pier known to be used in the transfer of arms from North Korea to Russia
Between late August and mid-February, Sky News recorded 34 days during which ships were visible at Rason’s once-empty piers.
While it is not publicly known how much weaponry has been provided by North Korea, the White House alleged in February that 10,000 containers of ammunition and other military materials had been sent since September 2023.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
A UN expert has said some young soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces are being left “psychologically broken” after “confront[ing] the reality among the rubble” when serving in Gaza.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, was responding to a Sky News interview with an Israeli solider who described arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza.
She told The World with Yalda Hakim that “many” of the young people fighting in Gaza are “haunted by what they have seen, what they have done”.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ms Albanese said. “This is not a war, this is an assault against civilians and this is producing a fracture in many of them.
“As that soldier’s testimony reveals, especially the youngest among the soldiers have been convinced this is a form of patriotism, of defending Israel and Israeli society against this opaque but very hard felt enemy, which is Hamas.
“But the thing is that they’ve come to confront the reality among the rubble of Gaza.”
Image: An Israeli soldier directs a tank near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel. Pic: AP
Being in Gaza is “probably this is the first time the Israeli soldiers are awakening to this,” she added. “And they don’t make sense of this because their attachment to being part of the IDF, which is embedded in their national ideology, is too strong.
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“This is why they are psychologically broken.”
Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said he believes the Sky News interview with the former IDF solider “reflects one part of how ugly, difficult and horrible fighting in a densely populated, urban terrain is”.
“I think [the ex-soldier] is reflecting on how difficult it is to fight in such an area and what the challenges are on the battlefield,” he said.
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10:42
Ex-IDF spokesperson: ‘No distinction between military and civilians’
‘An economy of genocide’
Ms Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts, also said her most recent report for the human rights council has identified “an economy of genocide” in Israel.
The system, she told Hakim, is made up of more than 60 private sector companies “that have become enmeshed in the economy of occupation […] that have Israel displace the Palestinians and replace them with settlers, settlements and infrastructure Israel runs.”
Israel has rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to defend itself after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.
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2:36
‘Israel has shifted towards economy of genocide’
The companies named in Ms Albanese’s report are in, but not limited to, the financial sector, big tech and the military industry.
“These companies can be held responsible for being directed linked to, or contributing, or causing human rights impacts,” she said. “We’re not talking of human rights violations, we are talking of crimes.”
“Some of the companies have engaged in good faith, others have not,” Ms Albanese said.
The companies she has named include American technology giant Palantir, which has issued a statement to Sky News.
It said it is “not true” that Palantir “is the (or a) developer of the ‘Gospel’ – the AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, and that we are involved with the ‘Lavender’ database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing”.
“Both capabilities are independent of and pre-ate Palantir’s announced partnership with the Israeli Defence Ministry,” the statement added.
Israel’s prime minister has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement at a White House dinner, and the US president appeared pleased by the gesture.
“He’s forging peace as we speak, and one country and one region after the other,” Mr Netanyahu said as he presented the US leader with a nominating letter.
Mr Trump took credit for brokering a ceasefire in Iran and Israel’s “12-day war” last month, announcing it on Truth Social, and the truce appears to be holding.
The president also claimed US strikes had obliterated Iran’s purported nuclear weapons programme and that it now wants to restart talks.
“We have scheduled Iran talks, and they want to,” Mr Trump told reporters. “They want to talk.”
Iran hasn’t confirmed the move, but its president told American broadcaster Tucker Carlson his country would be willing to resume cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
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But Masoud Pezeshkian said full access to nuclear sites wasn’t yet possible as US strikes had damaged them “severely”.
Away from Iran, fighting continues in Gaza and Ukraine.
Mr Trump famously boasted before his second stint in the White House that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Critics also claiming President Putin is ‘playing’ his US counterpart and has no intention of stopping the fighting.
However, President Trump could try to take credit for progress in Gaza if – as he’s suggested – an agreement on a 60-day ceasefire is able to get across the line this week.
Indirect negotiations with Hamas are taking place that could lead to the release of some of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages and see a surge in aid to Gaza.
America’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is to travel to Qatar this week to try to seal the agreement.
Whether it could open a path to a complete end to the war remains uncertain, with the two sides criteria for peace still far apart.
President Netanyahu has said Hamas must surrender, disarm and leave Gaza – something it refuses to do.
Mr Netanyahu also told reporters on Monday that the US and Israel were working with other countries who would give Palestinians “a better future” – and indicated those in Gaza could move elsewhere.
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” he added.
An Israeli reservist who served three tours of duty in Gaza has told Sky News in a rare on-camera interview that his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering areas soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat, a practice he says left civilians dead where they fell.
“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” he said. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous you need to kill them. No matter who it is,” he said.
Speaking anonymously, the soldier said troops killed civilians arbitrarily. He described the rules of engagement as unclear, with orders to open fire shifting constantly depending on the commander.
The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division. He was posted twice to the Netzarim corridor; a narrow strip of land cut through central Gaza early in the war, running from the sea to the Israeli border. It was designed to split the territory and allow Israeli forces to have greater control from inside the Strip.
He said that when his unit was stationed on the edge of a civilian area, soldiers slept in a house belonging to displaced Palestinians and marked an invisible boundary around it that defined a no-go zone for Gazans.
“In one of the houses that we had been in, we had the big territory. This was the closest to the citizens’ neighbourhood, with people inside. And there’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it,” he said. “But how can they know?”
People who crossed into this area were most often shot, he said.
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“It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle,” he said.
Image: The soldier is seen in Gaza. Photos are courtesy of the interviewed soldier, who requested anonymity
The soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Gazans were terrorists, even when they were clearly unarmed civilians. This perception, he said, was not challenged and was often endorsed by commanders.
“They don’t really talk to you about civilians that may come to your place. Like I was in the Netzarim road, and they say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn’t be there, and if he still comes, it means he’s a terrorist,” he said.
“This is what they tell you. But I don’t really think it’s true. It’s just poor people, civilians that don’t really have too many choices.”
He said the rules of engagement shifted constantly, leaving civilians at the mercy of commanders’ discretion.
“They might be shot, they might be captured,” he said. “It really depends on the day, the mood of the commander.”
He recalled an occasion of a man crossing the boundary and being shot. When another man came later to the body, he too was shot.
Later the soldiers decided to capture people who approached the body. Hours after that, the order changed again, shoot everyone on sight who crosses the “imaginary line”.
Image: The Israeli soldier during his on-camera interview with Sky News
At another time, his unit was positioned near the Shujaiya area of Gaza City. He described Palestinians scavenging scrap metal and solar panels from a building inside the so-called no-go zone.
“For sure, no terrorists there,” he said. “Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it’s kind of like the Wild West. So, some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that.”
The soldier said many of his comrades believed there were no innocents in Gaza, citing the Hamas-led 7 October attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Dozens of hostages have since been freed or rescued by Israeli forces, while about 50 remain in captivity, including roughly 30 Israel believes are dead.
He recalled soldiers openly discussing the killings.
“They’d say: ‘Yeah, but these people didn’t do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die’.”
He added: “People don’t feel mercy for them.”
“I think a lot of them really felt like they were doing something good,” he said. “I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren’t innocent.”
Image: The IDF soldier during one of his three tours in Gaza
In Israel, it is rare for soldiers to publicly criticise the IDF, which is seen as a unifying institution and a rite of passage for Jewish Israelis. Military service shapes identity and social standing, and those who speak out risk being ostracised.
The soldier said he did not want to be identified because he feared being branded a traitor or shunned by his community.
Still, he felt compelled to speak out.
“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country,” he said
“I think the war is… a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over,” he said.
He added: “I think in Israeli community, it’s very hard to criticise itself and its army. A lot of people don’t understand what they are agreeing to. They think the war needs to happen, and we need to bring the hostages back, but they don’t understand the consequences.
“I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what’s happening, it wouldn’t go down very well for them, and they wouldn’t agree with it. I hope that by speaking of it, it can change how things are being done.”
Image: The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division
We put the allegations of arbitrary killings in the Netzarim corridor to the Israeli military.
In a statement, the IDF said it “operates in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.
“The IDF operates against military targets and objectives, and does not target civilians or civilian objects,” the statement continued.
The Israeli military added that “reports and complaints regarding the violation of international law by the IDF are transferred to the relevant authorities responsible for examining exceptional incidents that occurred during the war”.
On the specific allegations raised by the soldier interviewed, the IDF said it could not address them directly because “the necessary details were not provided to address the case mentioned in the query. Should additional information be received, it will be thoroughly examined.”
The statement also mentioned the steps the military says it takes to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation warnings and advising people to temporarily leave areas of intense fighting.
“The areas designated for evacuation in the Gaza Strip are updated as needed. The IDF continuously informs the civilian population of any changes,” it said.