63win North Korea Is Experiencing Mass Casualties in Russia, White House Says

More than 1,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded fighting Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region in the past week, and a few chose suicide over surrender, the Biden administration said on Friday.

The heavy North Korean losses would amount to almost 10 percent of Pyongyang’s deployment figures to Russia. The announcement was the latest turn in the American effort to publicly criticize both President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, for sending ill-prepared and ill-equipped troops to a foreign front line to aid Russian efforts in its war with Ukraine.

John F. Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, volunteered the latest numbers of North Korean casualties during a call with reporters. “I hope they’re loading up their commanders with a bunch of body bags, because they’re clearly going to need it,” Mr. Kirby said of the North Koreans.

Mr. Kirby said that American officials also had reports that some North Korean soldiers had killed themselves rather than surrendering to Ukrainian forces, “likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea in the event that they’re captured.” He did not elaborate on how North Korean troops might be taking their own lives but said that administration officials believed that Russian and North Korean military leaders “are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses.”

North Korean troops began arriving in Russia this fall, and some Western officials initially believed it was a sign that the Kremlin had reached out in a desperate need for more soldiers. But U.S. intelligence agencies said this month that they had since assessed that the deployment was North Korea’s idea and not Russia’s, though Mr. Putin quickly embraced it.

The North Koreans have largely embedded with Russian units mounting a counteroffensive against a contingent of Ukrainian soldiers that has been holding territory in the Kursk region of Russia since the summer.

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Such a scenario would represent a notable degree of ticket-splitting, perpetuating a trend captured by surveys throughout this election cycle. Democratic Senate candidates in a number of swing states, including Arizona and Nevada, have consistently polled ahead of the top of the ticket, especially when President Biden was the party’s standard-bearer. As Ms. Harris’s nomination has made the election more competitive, the gap between her and those down-ballot Democrats has narrowed — but the trend persists in most races in swing states.

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