“Thousands” of North Korean soldiers in Russia, according to Washington

“Thousands” of North Korean soldiers have been sent ;é;s in Russia, the United States, Kiev and the West said on Wednesday, seeing the risk of a major escalation in the war in Ukraine.

“We have evidence that North Korean troops have gone to (…) Russia,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“What exactly they (the North Koreans) are doing ? remains to be seen,” he continued. “Whether they are co-belligerents, whether they intend to participate in this war on behalf of Russia, that is a very, very serious question.”

“Thousands of North Korean troops are in Russia for training,” another senior US official later clarified, acknowledging that the United States “did not know what their mission would be or whether they would go to fight in Ukraine.”

In Brussels, a NATO spokeswoman said that the countries of the Atlantic alliance had “confirmed the evidence of North Korean troop deployments in Russia.”

Ukraine: the positions of the military forces © AFP – Valentin RAKOVSKY, Sophie RAMIS, Cléa PECULIER

“If these troops were to fight in Ukraine, it would mark a significant escalation of North Korea's support for Russia's illegal war,” she added.

This is the first time that Washington and its allies publicly refer to “proof” of the presence of these North Korean soldiers on Russian soil.

According to South Korea, some of them are to go to the front line.

North Korea has denied providing Russia with forces for its offensive in Ukraine, with a Pyongyang representative at the UN even going so far as to call it a “baseless rumor.”

“The armed forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea exist, and where are they located? ? Please ask Pyongyang!” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday, denouncing “media hype.”

– “Don't die for no reason” –

“An estimated 1,500 more (North Korean) troops have been deployed to Russia,” bringing the total to 3,000, Rep. Park Sun-won, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters in Seoul after a briefing with the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

Some 10,000 North Korean troops are to be deployed to Russian territory by December, Park Sun-won added.

Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said the first North Korean troops were expected to arrive Wednesday in the Kursk region of Russia, which borders Ukraine, which has controlled several hundred square kilometers there since its surprise offensive in early August.

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Satellite image of Airbus Defence and Space released on October 18, 2024 by South Korean intelligence, showing according to it the Russian military base of Khabarovsk where North Korean soldiers are stationed © SOUTH KOREA'S NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE – Handout

South Korean intelligence said last week that North Korea had decided to send up to 12,000 troops to help Russia and that some 1,500 of its special forces were already in Russia to acclimatize before soon leaving for the front.

Ukraine called on Wednesday for the surrender of North Korean fighters who are already on its territory.

“You must not die for no reason in a foreign country,” wrote a service run by Ukrainian military intelligence in a message to them.

“You must not suffer the same fate as hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!”, we can read in this text also translated into Korean. “Surrender as prisoners of war! Ukraine will shelter, feed and warm you!”

The project behind the message titled “I want to live” was designed to help Russian military personnel who would like to surrender. It has a hotline, and a chatbot on the Telegram app.

– German fears –

On Wednesday, the German Foreign Ministry summoned the North Korean chargé d'affaires.

“If the information about North Korean soldiers in Ukraine were true and if North Korea supported the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine with troops, this would be serious and would constitute a violation of international law,” German diplomacy wrote on X.

Such support “directly threatens the security of Germany and European peace,” it added.

For its part, South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador on Monday to demand the “immediate” withdrawal of the North Korean soldiers who were allegedly there deployed.

After almost three years of war, Ukraine finds itself in a critical military situation, with its troops retreating for months on the eastern front.

The Russian army, larger and better armed, very regularly claims to have conquered villages, mainly in the Donetsk region, and is advancing towards Pokrovsk, an important hub for Ukrainian military logistics.

This photograph taken and published by the Ukrainian Red Cross on October 23, 2024 shows the building of the Ukrainian Red Cross that was destroyed in an airstrike in the Donetsk region © UKRAINIAN RED CROSS – Handout

It also continues to bomb Ukrainian cities and regions almost daily, due to the lack of sufficient air defense systems.

The Ukrainian Red Cross announced on Wednesday that one of its offices located in the Donetsk region, very close to the front line, had been destroyed “as a result of a Russian attack”, which did not cause any casualties.

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