Day 1038 On 27 December, the biggest updates are coming from Kursk. Here, as the North Korean assault suffered disastrous losses with little to no results, Russian commanders turned to Chin Special Forces to bolster their failing efforts.

However, a critical language barrier led to a catastrophic misunderstanding, with North Korean troops mistakenly opening fire on their Chechen reinforcements, resulting in even more devastating losses and further unraveling the offensive.

The main Russian offensive effort remains to take control of Kruglenkoye and the surrounding forests to advance further on Malaya Loknya and cut off the northern part of the Ukrainian salient. To accomplish this objective, Russians started reinforcing the new batches of North Korean meat waves with Chechen special operators.

As you remember from a previous report, Ukrainians have devised a plan to counter the North Korean tactic of overwhelming the Ukrainian defenses through sheer numbers. Ukrainians start by pulling back from disadvantageous positions, allowing North Koreans to take them instead, before annihilating the position with artillery and cluster munitions. Then, they launch cleanup raids with special forces to clear out the remaining survivors.

To maximize the damage, Ukrainians are not only targeting North Korean concentrations in the forests but also intensely destroying them as they move across the fields into the forests with FPV kamikaze drones. This prevents North Koreans from even reaching the forest and undermines any significant buildup of forces, which the North Koreans desperately need to use their tactics of human wave assaults. The footage shows that North Koreans still do not receive any armored support from their Russian army, forcing them to continue moving through the open fields on foot in full exposure to Ukrainian drone operators, which by this time are already heavily patrolling the fields along with any other entryway into the forest. The lack of further progress prompted the Russian commanders to reinforce this access with more experienced Chechen units. However, recently, the Institute for the Study of War and the Ukrainian intelligence service reported that North Koreans are facing significant coordination issues with Russians and Chechens due to the language barrier between them, undermining their combined offensives. This possibly explains the lack of Russian fire support for the North Korean assaults. While Russians have somewhat intensified their artillery and air bombardments on the Kruglenkoye section of the front, these strikes are almost never done in coordination with a North Korean assault, drastically decreasing both of their effectiveness.

Moreover, the Institute for the Study of War reported that a North Korean contingent in the Kursk direction had fired upon a deployed group of Chechen Akmad Special Forces, mistaking them for Ukrainians. The North Koreans had opened fire on the Chechen convoy, damaging and destroying several vehicles and killing eight of the Spetsnaz soldiers. This is not the only communication error that Russian soldiers have reported, as many stories of Russians being nearly killed by the unidentified North Koreans have become public. The Institute for the Study of War states that the poor integration and ongoing communication issues will likely continue to cause friction between Russian and North Korean forces in both their current and future military operations in the Kursk Oblast. Overall, the language barrier between Russian and North Korean forces has become the new biggest problem for the newfound military partnership on the ground, even leading to the controversial friendly fire incident between the North Koreans and Chechen Akmad Special Forces.

The inability to coordinate their combined operations has led to a lack of targeted armor and fire support for the North Korean attacks, severely undermining their effectiveness. Ukrainians therefore are continuing to find innovative ways to exploit these blatant weaknesses, not only targeting North Koreans when they are bunched up in the forests but also preventing them from bunching up in the first place, targeting any movement across the fields through drone strikes with surgical precision. In our daily frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Read also:

• Frontline report: Ukrainian forces decimate column of outnumbered North Korean soldiers in Kursk forest
• Frontline report: Ukrainian drone pilots turn North Korean fire against themselves
• Frontline report: Ukrainian artillery stops North Korean mass infantry charge near Cherkasskoe