US commander: Russia to supply North Korea with fighter jets in exchange for troop deployment

Russia intends to supply North Korea with fighter jets amid growing military partnership between the two countries, according to commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo. 

He said that Moscow agreed to send MiG-29 and Su-27 fighter aircraft to Pyongyang in exchange for North Korea deploying troops to Russia to support its war in Ukraine. 

Paparo noted that North Korean soldiers remain in combat zones, likely in reference to Kursk region, but are not yet actively fighting.

Defence Express, a Ukrainian news outlet, says North Korea possesses 18 MiG-29s, 34 Su-25s, and a variety of older MiG models, many of which may be non-operational.

The Ukrainian military-run National Resistance Centre reported on 4 December that North Korean soldiers have been stationed at observation posts and checkpoints in Russia's Kursk Oblast as a "second echelon" not involved in direct combat. 

Analysts from the crowd-sourced Ukrainian monitoring website DeepState Map reported on 10 December that Russian forces had advanced in the Sumy region near the border village of Oleksandriya. 

The map changes showed Russian forces occupying around 2 square kilometres in Sumy and advancing towards the Kursk region. 

Sumy regional authorities, including head of the military administration Volodymyr Artyukh, rejected the reports that Russian forces had breached the border, calling them "fake" and describing them as disinformation. 

ISW says it has not observed any evidence of Russian forces operating in or near Oleksandriya, but the think tank did confirm that Russian forces recently advanced in the main Ukrainian salient in the Kursk region amid continued fighting in the border area.