At the beginning of October, they began to arrive the first rumors on the presence of North Korean soldiers in Russia for a possible entry into combat in Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, South Korean and American intelligence services, among others, confirmed what was an open secret: that around 12,000 soldiers North Koreans had been deployed in the Russian region of Kursk (occupied since the summer by Ukraine) to fight alongside Kremlin forces.
Now as they continue to lose troops dizzying speeds – a total of 600,000 in two and a half years of war – the Russian armed forces have recruited hundreds of Yemeni fighters, according to Sunday’s report. Financial Times (FT). More precisely, they would be Houthi rebels, one of Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.
According to the British newspaper, it was the Yemeni mercenaries those who revealed that, through an intermediary company, they had been promised high salaries and even Russian citizenship in exchange for fighting alongside Moscow’s troops in Ukraine. For his part, the US special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, assured the FT that Russia maintain active contacts with the Houthis for the arms exchange, although he did not provide further details.
Capture of a video released by Ukrainian forces in which several Russian soldiers go to the Kursk region.
Social networks
In this sense, the incorporation of Yemeni mercenaries shows to what extent Moscow finds itself increasingly closer to Iran and their allied groups. An alliance between two pariah states based primarily on unlike the West.
Likewise, this is also an example of the growing presence of soldiers of other nationalities due to the Russian government’s reluctance to decree a general mobilization in your country. In fact, this very week, the The Kremlin has denied leading a new wave of mobilization of reservists to fight in Ukraine ahead of the fourth year of fighting in the neighboring country.
This is an attempt to avoid a repeat of what happened in September 2022, when a partial recruitment (some 300,000 men were mobilized) triggered a wave of discontent and indignation in the country and provoked the exodus of hundreds of thousands of men of military age.
Currently, the presence of mercenaries from Nepal and India is already recorded in the conflict in Ukraine, to which must be added the 12,000 North Korean troops sent to support Russian troops in the defense of Kursk.
Over the past year, after the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Houthis launched attacks on global supply chains by launching missiles at ships. cargo ships in the Red Sea. They have also attacked Israeli territory several times in a show of support for the Palestinian Hamas militia and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.
