North Koreans ‘blow themselves up with grenades rather than risk capture’, say Ukraine soldiers
North Korean troops appear to have temporarily pulled back from the frontline in Russia after suffering heavy losses, a Ukrainian special forces commander has told Sky News.
The commander, who goes by the codename “Puls”, said Kim Jong Un‘s men were likely either learning lessons from mistakes made during their first, bloody clashes with Ukrainian soldiers, tending to their wounded or waiting for reinforcements.
“I think they’ll be back soon,” he said, speaking at a secret base in northeastern Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier takes forensic samples from the body of a North Korean on the battlefield
Interviews with several Ukrainian troops reveal remarkable details about how the North Koreans have been fighting since they arrived on the battlefield in the Russian region of Kursk last month. This includes:
• An apparent initial lack of awareness about the threats from drones and artillery, with North Korean soldiers attacking on foot “like something out of World War Two” in groups of 20, 40 or even 60 men, making themselves easy targets
• “Brainwashing” which means they keep pushing forward despite being under Ukrainian fire and with comrades being killed and wounded around them
• A desire to remove evidence of their presence from the warzone, with North Koreans in white helmets spotted trying to recover the wounded and the dead
• A refusal to be taken alive, with claims that North Koreans have been seen blowing themselves up with grenades rather than risk capture. Puls even claimed a North Korean has been heard shouting “For General Kim Jong Un” before killing himself
• Poor coordination between North Korean and Russian forces because of the language barrier. One soldier claimed radio intercepts revealed North Koreans accidentally targeted Russian positions. He also said they would storm Ukrainian positions, suffering losses, but Russian troops would then fail to exploit the gains
• Better kit than many Russians, including rifles and uniform, but a lack of heavy armour, with North Koreans only moving on foot and using golf buggies to transport ammunition.
“They were all clean-shaven and perfectly groomed, like models,” said Puls.
“Every single one – no beards, unkempt hair, or bald heads… It was also hard to determine their age. They all looked between 25 and 35, maybe up to 40.”
Ukrainian special forces during the operation
North Korean troop deployment not officially confirmed
Ukraine and its Western allies say Pyongyang has sent 11,000 troops to join Russia’s war, focusing on bolstering infantry lines in the Kursk region where Ukrainian troops captured swathes of territory in a daring invasion last August.
Neither Kim Jong-Un nor Vladimir Putin have officially confirmed the deployment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed last week that some 4,000 North Korean soldiers have already been killed or injured.
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A Ukrainian commander, who goes by the codename ‘Puls’
Puls commands the 1st Combat Divers Battalion of Special Operations Forces.
His elite commandos were tasked with capturing DNA samples and documents from a unit of about 25 North Korean soldiers who were killed in a drone and artillery barrage about a fortnight ago inside Kursk.
Body camera footage from the mission has been shared with Sky News. Edited clips have also been posted on social media.
Samples of saliva and hair are taken from dead North Koreans
Forensic samples taken
Ukrainian soldiers can be seen carefully sticking cottonwool buds into the mouths of dead North Korean troops to take samples of saliva and place them in an evidence bag.
They then remove the troops’ helmets, cutting clumps of hair and bagging them as well.
In addition, body armour is cut away so the Ukrainians can more easily access the documents and other items on each soldier, including military identity cards, dog tags, handwritten notes and photographs.
There was also evidence of loved ones back home
‘North Koreans only had ammo and chocolate’
One of Puls’s men, who took part in the operation and goes by the codename “Trainer”, said he was surprised that the North Koreans only had ammunition and chocolate as supplies to sustain them in the fight.
“Not a single soldier had a water bottle,” he said.
“They rely on the idea that they will storm through, take positions, and then eat and survive off our supplies.”
Asked what personal belongings he found, Trainer said: “There were letters. Of course, there were notebooks, notes. There were hand-drawn maps… There were photos of children, mothers, letters they tried to send home.”
Military identity cards were Russian, suggesting a bid to hide the true ethnicity of the troops
The military identity cards were Russian – a seemingly clumsy attempt to hide the true ethnicity of the soldiers.
Trainer said some of the notes appeared to be of soldiers’ experiences in battle. He said it seemed as though they were trying to learn from their exposure to modern warfare.
“It’s the experience they are accumulating for their country, for conflicts they might face in the future,” he said.
North Koreans ‘more disciplined’
Puls described how the North Koreans fought differently from the Russians.
“They are far more disciplined, with exceptional morale and determination – completely brainwashed, really,” he said.
Puls said about a fortnight ago he noticed the North Koreans pulling back.
“The Russians are standing, working everywhere along the frontline, but no Koreans,” he said.
“Either they’re analysing their mistakes, or tending to their wounds, or maybe they’re waiting for reinforcements. There’s talk that Kim Jong-Un is sending more North Koreans here. That’s the situation.”
He said intercepted Russian communications appeared to indicate they would be returning.
“They’re still present, training or waiting for reinforcements. Something is happening, they’ll be back soon.”
Iran says Israel and America would be “crazy” to attack its nuclear facilities, adding it would spell a “very bad disaster” for the region.
The warning came in the first interview to be given by Iran’s foreign minister since its arch nemesis Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News in the Iranian capital, Abbas Araghchi also mocked the US president for proposing a “clean out” of Palestinians from Gaza. Iran’s top diplomat suggested instead that Israelis be sent to Greenland.
Sky News’ international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn with Mr Araghchi
Mr Araghchi invited Sky News to Iran’s foreign ministry for the interview, taking the opportunity to address talk of Israel attacking Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme with US backing.
“We have made it clear,” he said, “that any attack to our nuclear facilities would be faced with an immediate and decisive response. But I don’t think they will do that crazy thing. This is really crazy. And this would turn the whole region into a very bad disaster.”
Donald Trump. Pic: Reuters
In his first term in office, Mr Trump reneged on America’s support for an internationally negotiated deal over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme, which saw uranium enrichment limited in return for sanctions being lifted.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is for civilian and peaceful purposes. However, since Mr Trump went back on the deal, Iran has returned to enriching uranium to levels that have no purpose other than building a nuclear weapon, say Western governments.
Mr Trump has hinted he would prefer a diplomatic solution, saying a new deal with Iran would be “nice”.
But Mr Araghchi said although he was prepared to listen to President Trump, it would take a lot more than that for Iran to be convinced it should begin negotiations with the US towards another deal, given what happened with the first.
“The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time,” he said. “Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence… We haven’t heard anything but the ‘nice’ word, and this is obviously not enough.”
‘Take them to Greenland’
The foreign minister was also dismissive of Mr Trump’s latest comments about the Middle East. The re-elected president’s proposal that Gaza is cleaned out of Palestinians has prompted outrage across the region.
Mr Araghchi mocked the idea with one of his own: “My suggestion is something else. Instead of Palestinians, try to expel Israelis, take them to Greenland so they can kill two birds with one stone.”
Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on 1 October, 2024
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts Iranian rockets. Pics: Reuters
Iran’s allies ‘are rebuilding themselves’
In his short term in office, Mr Araghchi has seen allies and friends assassinated and toppled from power.
He conceded Iran’s allies have been weakened, saying: “Hamas and Hezbollah have been damaged. But at the same time, they are rebuilding themselves, because as I said, this is a school of thought, this is an idea, this is a cause, this is an ideal that will always be there.”
Iranians hope deal could be done with West
Iranians we spoke to on the streets of Tehran said they hoped a deal could be done with the West if it could lead to a lifting of sanctions and an improvement in Iran’s dire economic fortunes.
Some estimates place inflation at 50%, while youth unemployment is near 20% and the currency is at an all-time low.
Trust between Iran and America is also at rock bottom levels. Making progress towards any agreement and lifting sanctions will be enormously challenging.
Donald Trump thinks the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims it has a technical advantage over US rivals, should be “a wakeup call” for American AI firms.
DeepSeek says its artificial intelligence models are comparable with those from US giants, like OpenAI which is behind ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but potentially a fraction of the cost.
That has triggered a fall in various US shares, especially chipmaker Nvidia which registered a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street.
But the US president believes the success of the Chinese firm could be helpful to America’s AI aspirations.
“The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Mr Trump said in Florida.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has promised to outperform rival firm DeepSeek. Pic: AP
He pointed to DeepSeek’s ability to use fewer computing resources. “I view that as a positive, as an asset… you won’t be spending as much, and you’ll get the same result, hopefully,” he added.
On Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had surpassed ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s app store.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has given his rival some acknowledgement in a post on X, reacting to DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model – a core part of the AI technology which answers questions.
“DeepSeek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” he wrote.
But Mr Altman was also defiant: “We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”
There have been concerns DeepSeek could undermine the potentially $500bn (£401bn) AI investment by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank in Stargate which Mr Trump announced last week at the White House.
That project essentially aims to build vastly more computing power to boost AI development.
But while addressing Republicans in Miami on Monday, Mr Trump remained upbeat. He claimed that Chinese leaders had told him the US had the most brilliant scientists in the world.
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He indicated that if Chinese industry could come up with cheaper AI technology, US companies would follow.
“We always have the ideas. We’re always first. So I would say that’s a positive that could be very much a positive development.
“So instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,” Mr Trump said.
The intense attention on the Chinese firm has not all been good news though. It reported suffering “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services.
The company said it was hit by a cyber attack on Monday which disrupted users’ ability to register on the site.
The arrival of a previously little-known Chinese tech company has attracted global attention as it sent shockwaves through Wall Street with a new AI chatbot.
On Monday, DeepSeek, a tiny company which reportedly employs no more than 200 people, caused American chipmaker Nvidia to have almost $600bn wiped off its market value – the biggest drop in US stock market history.
The Chinese AI chatbot threatens the billions of dollars invested in AI while causing US tech stocks to lose well over $1trn (£802bn) in value, according to market analysts.
DeepSeek, which has developed two models, V3 and R1, is now the most popular free application on Apple’s App Store across the US and UK.
What’s DeepSeek?
The startup was founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China, by Liang Wenfeng, who previously co-founded one of China’s top hedge funds, High-Flyer.
The fund had by 2022 amassed a cluster of 10,000 of California-based Nvidia’s high-performance A100 graphics processor chips that are used to build and run AI systems, according to a post that summer on Chinese social media platform WeChat.
Former US President Joe Biden’s administration restricted sales of those chips to China soon after, something likely to be pursued by his successor, Donald Trump, who was recently sworn in for a second term in the White House.
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China’s DeepSeek should be a ‘wakeup call’
Why all the attention now?
The hype – and market turmoil – over DeepSeek follows a research paper published last week about the R1 model, which showed advanced “reasoning” skills.
They include the ability to rethink its approach to a math problem while, depending on the task, being 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI’s o1 model, according to a post on DeepSeek’s official WeChat account.
That’s why there are fears it could undermine the potentially $500bn AI investment by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that Mr Trump has touted.
What’s so cool about it?
As Morgan Brown, vice president of product and growth in artificial intelligence at Dropbox, put it, it is currently “insanely expensive” to train top AI models.
“DeepSeek just showed up and said ‘LOL what if we did this for $5M instead?’
“And they didn’t just talk – they actually DID it. Their models match or beat GPT-4 and Claude on many tasks. The AI world is (as my teenagers say) shook,” he said in a post on X.
So how much did it cost?
The company wrote in a paper last month that the training of DeepSeek-V3 required less than $6m (£5m) worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips.
How has President Trump responded?
Speaking to House Republicans on Monday, the 78-year-old Republican called the development a “wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win”.
But Mr Trump signed an order on his first day in office last week that said his administration would “identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls”, signalling that he is likely to strengthen Mr Biden’s approach.
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Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who has advised Mr Trump on tech policy, has warned overregulation of the AI industry by the US government will hinder American companies and enable China to get ahead.
“Deepseek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” said Mr Andreessen in a recent post on X, referencing the 1957 satellite launch that set off a Cold War space exploration race between the Soviet Union and the US.
What are the concerns?
Some people expressed their reservations about the Chinese company and its handling of users’ data.
Too controversial?
People have also been flagging how, when it comes to questions about alleged wrongdoing and human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government, the app seems unable to respond.
Seemingly controversial topics include Taiwan, which China claims as its own, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre as well as China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, which the UN has previously said “may constitute crimes against humanity”.
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