North Korea has supplied Russia with thousands of troops to fight against Ukraine, intelligence officials said, but old footage that has resurfaced on social media does not show the funeral of a general deployed by Pyongyang to lead its troops in the ongoing invasion.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has, for the first time, sent combatant units abroad, to aid Russia in the war in Ukraine. As noted in the Joint Statement on the DPRK’s Deployment of Troops to Russia this development indelibly connects the Indo-Pacific and European theaters,

North Korea has lost more than 3,000 troops in about two months of combat in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday — and he criticized world leaders for doing “almost nothing” to counter Moscow’s alliance with Pyongyang.

According to "The New York Times," Kim Jong Un proposed sending his troops to Russia, not Vladimir Putin. American services claim that North Korea hopes to earn future benefits in this way. According to "NYT,