File picture of North Korean soldiers marching for the 70th anniversary of the nation’s founding day in Pyongyang, North Korea
| Photo Credit: AP

North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and likely fight against Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the U.S. Pentagon said Monday (October 28, 2024), in a move that Western leaders say will intensify the almost three-year war and jolt relations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Some of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion.

Earlier Monday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte NATO confirmed recent Ukrainian intelligence reports that some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.

Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will pile more pressure on Ukraine’s weary and overstretched army. It will also stoke geopolitical tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, Western officials say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to reshape global power dynamics. He sought to build a counterbalance to Western influence with a summit of BRICS countries, including the leaders of China and India, in Russia last week. He has sought direct help for the war from Iran, which has supplied drones, and North Korea, which has shipped large amounts of ammunition, according to Western governments.

Mr. Rutte told reporters in Brussels that the North Korean deployment represents “a significant escalation” in Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict and “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”

U.S. President Joe Biden also called the deployment “dangerous. Very dangerous.”

U.S. officials to meet South Korean counterparts

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with their South Korean counterparts later this week in Washington.

Ms. Singh said Mr. Austin and Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun will discuss the deployment of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine. There will be no limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons on those forces, Singh said.

“If we see DPRK troops moving in towards the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Ms. Singh said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shrugged off Mr. Rutte’s comments and noted that Pyongyang and Moscow signed a joint security pact last June. He stopped short of confirming North Korean soldiers were in Russia.

Mr. Lavrov claimed that Western military instructors long have been covertly deployed to Ukraine to help its military use long-range weapons provided by Western partners.