NORTH KOREA DEPLOYING 10,000 TROOPS TO FIGHT UKRAINE: PENTAGON

Tue 29 October 2024:

North Korea sent around 10,000 troops to eastern Russia and to fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday.

“We have seen reports from over the weekend indicating that DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) soldiers have started arriving in western Russia.

“We believe that the DPRK has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks,” Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

A portion of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, Singh added, stressing that the US is “increasingly concerned” that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region near the border with Ukraine.

She declined to confirm that North Korean forces were already in Kursk, saying “it is likely that they are moving in that direction towards Kursk. But I don’t have more details just yet.”

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte confirmed earlier Monday that some North Korean troops were already in the Kursk region, calling it a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict.

Rutte said the deployment of North Korean troops to Kursk is a sign of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “growing desperation.” He also called on Russia and North Korea to cease these actions immediately.

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12,000 Troops to Fight Ukraine

About 3,000 North Korean soldiers are now fighting alongside Russian troops, with thousands more still to come, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“North Korean soldiers and officers are already on the territory of Russia, and they are already being used on our territory—3,000 North Korean soldiers,” the Ukrainian president said during an appearance at a conference with Kyiv’s Nordic backers in Reykjavik, Iceland. “We believe that the information from our intelligence is true, and soon they will have 12,000,” he added, in remarks reported by Ukrainian media. “This should happen soon enough.”

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader said he had told South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that these 3,000 North Korean fighters were on “Russian training grounds in the immediate vicinity of the war zone.”

Ukrainian and South Korean officials said in recent weeks that between 10,000 and 12,000 North Korean troops had been earmarked to fight alongside Russia against Ukraine.

Kyiv’s GUR military intelligence service said on Thursday that it had detected North Korean troops in the Russian border region of Kursk for the first time the previous day. Ukraine launched an incursion into the region nearly three months ago, which Russia initially struggled to peel back. Moscow hasn’t yet managed to push Kyiv’s troops from Russian soil.

More than two and a half years into full-scale war in Ukraine, Kyiv and Moscow are looking for new ways to refill their exhausted ranks, with the winter unlikely to provide a reprieve from high casualty counts.

North Korean troops swelling Russian ranks would likely be a very appealing prospect for the Kremlin, staring down the unpopular options of mobilizing more personnel or sending conscripts to Ukraine. It isn’t clear how many troops North Korea is willing to send to aid Russia, but it is a worrying prospect for Kyiv and its smaller pool of potential military recruits.

Western and South Korean officials have widely condemned the move as a dangerous escalation.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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