Four months after the first North Korean anti-tank missile vehicles appeared on the front line in Ukraine, Ukrainian drone pilots managed to shoot down and destroy one of them.

The Bulsae-4 vehicle was attacked by a Ukrainian FPV drone from the 3rd Assault Brigade on a road in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.

Some of the eight anti-tank missiles carried by the Bulsae-4 were destroyed in the attack. The Ukrainian brigade group claims that the vehicle has been neutralized.

This is the first confirmed attack on one of the growing vehicles that North Korea, along with thousands of soldiers, has sent to help Russia. Along with an unknown number of Bulsae-4 vehicles, the North Koreans reportedly sent several dozen M1989 howitzers and M1991 rocket launchers.

The Russians have been losing between 1200 and 2000 soldiers and up to a hundred vehicles every day for months.

They are attacking hard in a desperate bid to (re)take as much territory as they can before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, which could completely change the politics of the war.

Total Russian losses after 33 months of war may exceed 730.000 soldiers killed and wounded and 15.000 pieces of heavy equipment destroyed, damaged, abandoned or seized. Ukraine's losses, on the other hand, are much smaller.

The Russian offensive that began in Ukraine's Donbas region late last year — and a slightly smaller offensive in which the Russians have been trying to drive Ukrainians out of Kursk since early October — are bringing small but steady progress for Russia.

However, catastrophic losses dampened their momentum. "Russian forces will make significant progress if the Ukrainian military does not halt its offensive operations," writes the American Institute for the Study of War, "but the Russian military cannot sustain these casualty rates forever, especially not for such gains. small."

Without those thousands of North Korean soldiers and dozens of howitzers, Russia's position in the war would be even more fragile than it is now. This is exactly why the first Ukrainian attack on a North Korean vehicle is such big news.

In order to stop the offensive in Donbas and Kursk, the Ukrainians must not only continue to inflict terrible losses on Russian forces, but must begin to do the same to the North Korean forces fighting on Russia's side. That venture has just begun.