Thousands of North Korean soldiers in Russia will be sent to fight Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region in the next week, Kyiv intelligence officials have warned.
The officials said that overall more than 12,000 North Koreans had arrived in the far east of Russia ahead of their deployment in Kursk, although other countries differed on the size of Pyongyang’s force.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin also said on Wednesday that Washington was “seeing evidence that there are North Korean troops that have gone to Russia”. North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia from early to mid October, according to the White House.
While South Korea and Ukraine have previously said Pyongyang had sent troops, Austin’s comments marked the first time the US had confirmed the North Koreans’ presence in Russia.
“If they’re a cobelligerent, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue,” Austin said. “It will have impacts not only in Europe — it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”
The troops were undergoing training at military sites in eastern Russia and it was not clear whether they would enter combat in Ukraine, though “this is certainly a highly concerning probability”, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said later on Wednesday.
Should North Korean soldiers enter into combat, it would be an “unprecedented level of military co-operation” between Russia and North Korea with significant security implications in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, Kirby said.
Ukraine’s western allies are increasingly concerned about North Korea’s role. While Pyongyang has provided Russia with missiles and millions of artillery shells, the deployment of military units marks the first foray of a foreign country’s army in the conflict.
The Ukrainian officials said that recent information had led them to revise up the total number of North Koreans to 12,000, including special forces, and that “thousands” would be dispatched to Kursk, in the south of the country, by the end of the month.
Last week President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 10,000 North Koreans had been sent to Russia.
The Kyiv officials added that the soldiers had been personally sent off by North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in a ceremony this month.
Ukraine captured an area of about 600 sq km in Kursk in a surprise raid in August, and hopes to use it as a bargaining chip in any negotiations with Russia to end the war.
The North Korean troops have been filmed receiving Russian military uniforms and equipment at a training ground in Russia’s far east, according to the South Korean government.
Both Ukrainian and South Korean officials said the troops have been given false documents identifying them as Buryats, an indigenous group in Siberia, to allow Moscow and Pyongyang plausible deniability about their involvement.
Other countries have provided different estimates of the likely number of North Koreans being deployed.
South Korea’s spy chief Cho Tae-yong briefed lawmakers on Wednesday that 3,000 North Korean troops had been sent to Russia, with more deployments still to come.
“We don’t even know whether we are talking about 1,500, 12,000, or what kind of soldiers are coming to Russia,” said Boris Pistorius, German defence minister.
In a meeting with Pistorius in London, John Healey, UK defence secretary, denounced the “highly likely” deployment as a “shocking escalation” in the Ukraine war.
On Tuesday, North Korea’s state media agency released a response to Seoul’s allegations from Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in which she accused South Korea and Ukraine of “going about begging and letting loose reckless remarks against nuclear weapons states at random without follow-up capability”.
Describing the two countries as “bad dogs bred by the US”, she said that “a military provocation against a nuclear weapons state may lead to a horrible situation, unimaginable for politicians and military experts in any big or small country in the world with their normal thinking to experience.”
South Korean officials suggested this week that the North Korean troop deployment to Russia could convince Seoul to supply direct lethal military aid to Ukraine for the first time.
A presidential official told South Korean state media that Seoul would consider sending Kyiv defensive weapons, “and if a threshold is exceeded, we could ultimately consider offensive weapons as well”.
Moscow’s possible reliance on North Korean troops “would be a sign of weakness, not strength, on the part of the Kremlin”, Kirby said.
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