NATO confirms that North Korea has sent troops to join Russia's war in Ukraine


NATO confirms that North Korea has sent troops to join Russia

Updated October 28, 2024 BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO on Monday confirmed that North Korean troops have been sent to help Russia in its almost three-year war against Ukraine and said some have already been deployed in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion. “Today, I can confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and that North Korean military units have been deployed to the Kursk region,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters. Rutte said the move represents “a significant escalation” in North Korea’s involvement in the conflict and marks “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.” 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. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shrugged off 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. Lavrov claimed that Western military instructors already have been covertly deployed to Ukraine to help its military use long-range weapons provided by Western partners. “Western military personnel long have been working in Ukraine,” Lavrov said after a meeting with the Kuwaiti foreign minister in Moscow.