KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in Russia’s Kursk region and warned that Pyongyang could send more personnel and equipment for Moscow’s army.
“There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said on X after receiving a report from his top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“We will have tangible responses to this,” he added.
The estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that provided by Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), which said on Monday at least 1,100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded.
The assessment was in line with a briefing last week by South Korea’s spy agency, which reported some 100 deaths with another 1,000 wounded in the region.
Zelensky said he cited preliminary data. Reuters could not independently verify reports on combat losses.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side. Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the troop deployment as “fake news,” but a North Korean official has said any such deployment would be lawful.
According to Ukrainian and allied assessments, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia.
Some of them have been deployed for combat in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a chunk of land after a major cross-border incursion in August.
JCS added that it has
detected signs
of Pyongyang planning to produce suicide drones to be shipped to Russia, in addition to the already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers.
Kyiv continues to press allies for a tougher response as it says Moscow’s and Pyongyang’s transfer of warfare experience and military technologies constitute a global threat.
“For the world, the cost of restoring stability is always much higher than the cost of effectively pressuring those who destabilize the situation and destroy lives,” Zelensky said.

NEW DELHI: Part-time musician Aniruddha Pratim was always interested in learning Urdu, believing that it was key to better understanding the range of music from the subcontinent.

For the past few weeks, the Delhi-based consultant has been spending his free time and coffee breaks glued to an app called Humzaaban, which allows him to learn the language that was for centuries used prominently in Indian culture and poetry.

“I’ve always been a little keen about Urdu. I feel like it sounds very poetic, sounds very soulful,” Pratim told Arab News.

“I open (the app) whenever I get a chance to … It has got a very interactive user interface with a lot of audio-visual cues and everything, so it’s a fun app to use,” he said. “Maybe someday I can write a poem of my own in Urdu.”

Humzaaban is the brainchild of Tausif and Tanzil Rahman, who set out to preserve and promote the language they grew up with at a time when interest in speaking Urdu was waning among people in India.

Despite Urdu’s prominent role throughout Indian history, the language has been facing multiple threats from communal politics and the quest for economic prosperity in more recent decades.

Urdu has been stigmatized as foreign, the language of India’s archrival Pakistan, while families increasingly choose to enroll their children in schools that teach English or other Indian languages to better equip them for the job market.

While millions still speak Urdu today, they make up less than 5 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population. The language is also no longer taught in the majority of schools across the country.

“There has been a consistent decline in Urdu (following the independence) of India,” Tausif told Arab News, adding that the economic value of learning English has naturally led it to become preferred over Urdu.

“Urdu has lost its economic value; none of the business transactions are being done in Urdu.”

Yet the language still holds significance for many people across India, the wider subcontinent and the diaspora, who grew up humming songs from Bollywood musicals that draw heavily on Urdu poetry.

For Tausif, the motivation to create an app dedicated to learning Urdu stemmed out of his own passion for Urdu poetry.

“We speak Urdu at home, and we were discussing the future of Urdu in India and outside India,” he said.

“We decided to create a beautiful learning app, which will enable you to read and write Urdu, to understand what is happening in the Urdu world … and with this idea and with this vision, we started our journey.”

After five years of research, trial and error, the brothers, whose day jobs are in the corporate world, launched Humzaaban in October to reach a wider audience.

Tanzil said interest in Urdu transcended generations, as he saw diverse participation at an offline Urdu learning program he teaches on the weekends.

“The program participation from across generations, communities and professions gave us confidence that there is a yearning to explore this language,” he said.

The Rahman brothers believe that Urdu has the potential to flourish and made a dedicated app that they claim is more comprehensive than others in the market.

With around 3,000 Humzaaban users and counting, many said they were drawn to the app because of its interactive features and user-friendly design.

“There are very few platforms that focus on Urdu learning … but after looking into the Humzaaban app, I am very impressed,” Mohd. Azam, a Delhi-based marketing professional, told Arab News.

“I am very interested in poetry, (and) Urdu has very beautiful words … which inspire me a lot, so I want to learn from this app and maybe write some poetry.”

For Sahar Rizvi, who is based in London, the app has served as a bridge to reconnect with her roots. After learning Urdu as a child, she lost touch with the language as she grew up and forgot the basics.

“My father mentioned the Humzaaban app, and it has been awesome to catch up again. It teaches right from the beginning! I often play around with it during my time on the train,” Rizvi said.

“I’m re-learning to read Urdu … It’s a beautiful language, and I do want to incorporate it in my daily usage.”