For six months, the Kremlin had denied that North Korean soldiers were fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine. But that changed recently. On Monday, Vladimir Putin officially thanked North Korea for its help in retaking Kursk Region.

“Our Korean friends’ move was guided by a sense of solidarity, justice and genuine comradery. We highly appreciate this and are sincerely grateful, personally to the Chairman of State Affairs, Comrade Kim Jong-un, as well as the entire leadership and the people of the DPRK,” Putin said in an official address.

It all began on April 26, when Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, while briefing Putin about operations Kursk Region, stated that North Korean soldiers, “while carrying out combat missions shoulder to shoulder with Russian servicemen, demonstrated high professionalism during the repulsion of the Ukrainian invasion, resilience, courage and heroism.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also posted on her Telegram channel that “we will never forget our friends,” adding a handshake emoji and the Russian and North Korean flags.

Reports of North Korean troops fighting alongside the Russian army had surfaced as early as last autumn, but Russian officials denied them. At one press briefing, when journalists asked Zakharova whether the reports were true, she responded: “we should not play into the hands of the Kyiv regime and its Western sponsors by indulging in anti-Russia hysteria. We ought to think about the consequences for South Korea’s security that could result from the Republic of Korea’s involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.”

Kremlin press secretary Dmitri Peskov also said in October that claims about North Korea’s involvement in the war sounded like fiction. Now, however, he says Moscow is ready to provide military assistance to Pyongyang.

“Without a doubt, our treaty is in effect, and under this treaty, the parties are obligated to provide immediate assistance to each other if necessary,” Peskov was quoted as saying by the Vedomosti daily. He was referring to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty signed in summer 2024.

Recently, Russian media circulated an article from the state-run Korean Central News Agency that Kim Jong-un would erect a monument in Pyongyang to the soldiers who fought in Kursk. The Korean soldiers were said to have “performed immortal feats to be recorded in golden letters in the history of the development of the DPRK-Russia relations.”

The pro-Kremlin daily Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a story titled “Not Posting Every Sneeze Online” about how the presence of North Korean soldiers had been kept secret all these months. The key, as the headline suggests, was that the North Koreans were not distracted by social media.

“I think much of the success has to do with the discipline of the North Korean fighters,” the author submitted. “They do not have ‘TikTok culture’… and are not used to posting every sneeze online. Ukrainian intelligence services and their curators probably suspected that North Korea was fighting for us, but they had no proof.”

On April 28, Andrei Morochko, a military expert frequently cited by pro-Kremlin media, praised the fearlessness of North Korean soldiers in comments to Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“During the battles with the Ukrainian nationalists, only one North Korean was taken prisoner. Mostly, as my fellow soldiers noted, DPRK troops preferred death over surrender,” Morochko said.

On the same day, one of the most popular Russian Telegram channels about the daily life of soldiers at the front line, Batal'on Vostok, published a post about what it was like to work with the North Koreans. It claimed that “there were problems with communication while coordination was being established, i.e., a language barrier, but there were no problems with discipline.”

“You might think that soldiers raised on propaganda and who had never participated in real combat would falter, lose heart or flee the battlefield at the sight of what war does to living flesh, but no one saw anything like that from the Koreans,” Batal'on Vostok wrote.

Days ago, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a video showing North Korean soldiers training in Russia. The footage shows them learning to use Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs and throw grenades. They are wearing helmets decorated with black-and-orange St George ribbons, a Russian military symbol synonymous with the victory in World War II that has been appropriated by the Kremlin. At the end of the video, the North Korean soldiers are shown marching and singing field songs.