Hello and welcome to the Battlebrand podcast with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

The big news this week was an alarming report from South Korea's National Intelligence

Service that North Korea had transferred 1,500 of its special forces to eastern Russia, where

they're said to be training for deployment to the front line in Russia's war in Ukraine.

Transported in ships of the Russian Pacific Fleet, they've been issued with Russian uniforms,

weapons, and fake identification cards stating that they are residents of with Russian uniforms, weapons and fake identification

cards stating that they are residents of the Sakhia and Buratia republics. Even scarier was a report

by South Korea's Yon Hap News Agency that the special forces are the tip of the iceberg and that

North Korea has agreed to send four brigades totaling 12,000 personnel to fight

in the war in Ukraine. This report was given credence by Lieutenant General Kirillow Budenov,

Ukraine's Chief of Military Intelligence, who said that there are nearly 11,000 North

Korean infantry troops training in Eastern Russia, and they'll be ready to fight in Ukraine

by November 1st,

with the first carder of 2,600 sent to Kursk or blast.

Further confirmation came from Russian mill bloggers who posted footage that seemed to show

North Korean soldiers marching at a Russian training ground.

Yeah, it's all fascinating, isn't it?

And by the way, that attempt to

pass the Koreans off as natives of Saka and Buryatia is possible, because they're basically

in the same neck of the woods. If you look at the map, Saka is right over on the very far east of

the Russian Federation. And so it's just, it's sort of like, I don't know, a thousand kilometers

north of North Korea. Saka is actually huge, it's the biggest of the Russian republics, almost

...