Ukraine's president told podcaster Lex Fridman that 3,800 North Koreans had been killed or wounded fighting alongside Russia but many more could come.

At the same time on Saturday, the Ukrainian armed forces reported 179 separate clashes along the tense line of contact, facing down attacks around the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the city of Pokrovsk in the country's Donbas region. They estimated as many as 1,730 Russian personnel were killed or captured in the assaults.

Ukrainian troops in Kursk killed eight North Korean soldiers using drones, and five in a gunbattle, Kyiv said.

Russian and North Korean forces suffered “significant” losses in intense fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said. Speaking during his nightly video address on Saturday,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported on Jan. 4 that Russian forces lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry and Russian paratroopers in battles near Makhnovka, a village in Kursk Oblast.