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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 warned.
The officials added that overall more than 12,000 North Koreans had arrived in the far east of Russia ahead of deployment in Kursk, although other countries differ 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”.
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.”
Ukraine’s western allies are increasingly concerned at 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 about 600 sq km area of 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 of their involvement.
Other countries have provided different estimates about the likely number of North Koreans 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 “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.”
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