Up to 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Kursk Oblast in western Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday. U.S. intelligence suggests the North Koreans will join the fighting along the 270-square-mile salient that Ukrainian forces carved out of Kursk starting in August. “We expect that to happen in the coming days,” Blinken said.

The North Korean deployment could add additional weight to Russian attacks in Kursk and help gain valuable experience for Pyongyang's army, which has not fought a major war in 70 years. But it is also possible that the operation has no effect on the front and only results in many North Koreans being killed without anyone finding out.

It is not for nothing that the Kremlin sent these North Korean reinforcements to Kursk. Last month, Russian forces carried out a counterattack on the Ukrainian salient in the oblast. The Russians have advanced a short distance on the western side of the salient. But on the eastern side they are being massacred by Ukrainian troops firing from fortifications that the Ukrainians had apparently captured from the Russians in August.

The Russian Navy's 810th Marine Infantry Brigade is responsible for the main counterattack on the eastern edge of the salient. The 2,000-strong brigade has suffered greatly in recent days. On or shortly before October 24, Brigade 16's 382nd Separate Battalion sent scouts to reconnoiter Ukrainian positions, apparently near Russkaya Konopelka or nearby settlements.

“Our goal was to detect the enemy,” one of the scouts explained in a video translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “We did that,” said the scout. He and his 15 comrades radioed the location of a Ukrainian machine gun emplacement, believed to be in one of the many defensive earthworks that advancing Ukrainian troops captured from Kursk's surprise Russian garrison in August.

But then the battalion or brigade commanders did something unexpected. They ordered the lightly armed scouts to attack the machine gun nest directly. “The enemy had an enormous numerical superiority,” the scout explained. “We had four groups of four people each. Two groups ceased to exist.”

The survivors threatened mutiny. “We don’t want to serve in this battalion anymore,” the scout said. “We won’t be cannon fodder.”

Help comes in the form of several regiments of North Korean troops. Whether the North Korean soldiers will succeed where the Russian Marines failed in Kursk remains to be seen. But it is an ominous sign that the Russians have only assigned an interpreter to about 30 North Koreans, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, DC.

It is possible that Russian commanders do not expect to coordinate closely with North Korean moves. Instead, Russian officers could simply issue simple, broad orders—and then hope for the best. This type of blunt command and control resulted in the 810th Marines' scouts being killed in a pointless direct attack on entrenched Ukrainians. It could also result in many North Koreans being killed.

According to ISW, Pyongyang is striving for its troops to gain combat experience. If so, then the war is essentially a very dangerous training exercise for the North Koreans in Kursk. The risk, of course, is that the North Koreans will learn what these Russian Marines recently learned: that their commanders are cruel, ignorant, or both — and that following stupid orders from indifferent officers is harmful to their health.

“If the Russian command decided to use North Korean personnel as 'cannon fodder' and not take advantage of the specialized training of certain North Korean units,” ISW mused, “the losses that North Korean troops are sure to suffer will be undermined.” Battlefield hopes to learn.”