North Korean troops fighting Ukraine will be 'fair game,' U.S. warns Putin
Oct. 24, 2024, 4:25 PM GMT+5
SEOUL, South Korea — Some 12,000 North Korean troops will be sent to Russia, a key United States ally said Thursday, vowing it “will not stand by and do nothing” in the face of this significant “provocation.”
The new estimate, shared with NBC News by South Korea’s defense ministry, comes after the United States joined Seoul and Kyiv in confirming the development and said any troops deployed against Ukraine will be “fair game.”
Pyongyang is expected to augment Russia’s military with its own sizable contingent of special forces, military engineers, and artillery troops, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun reported to lawmakers Thursday, his office told NBC News. The total number is expected to reach 12,000, he said, with 3,000 deployed already.
That matches Washington’s assessment.
“They’re fair game” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday, saying that the U.S. believes at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers have already arrived in eastern Russia by sea. The soldiers moved earlier this month and are receiving training at multiple Russian military bases, Kirby said.
“They're fair targets and the Ukrainian military will defend themselves against North Korean soldiers the same way they’re defending themselves against Russian soldiers,” he said. “There could be dead and wounded North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine.”
His comments were the first detailed assessment Washington has offered, after its allies grew frustrated by sounding the alarm for days with their own intelligence. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin first confirmed their deployment earlier Wednesday and NATO followed with its own later in the day.
“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Austin told reporters in Rome.
But U.S. allies were in little doubt.
North Korean soldiers were being disguised as Russians and were acting under the Kremlin’s command instead of their own, the South Korean defense minister told lawmakers Thursday, which he said suggested “Kim Jong Un is selling North Korean soldiers as cannon fodder mercenaries.”
Still, integrating the two militaries will not be easy and will likely be complicated by their different languages, experts say, though the prospect of North Korea’s inexperienced military bringing back critical battleground experience has worried officials in Seoul.
“North Korea’s dispatch of the troops to Russia is a provocation that is threatening the security of the Korean peninsula,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday. “South Korea will not stand by and do nothing,” Yoon’s office said in a statement.