Only weeks after arriving in Russia, around 8,000 North Korean troops have deployed in the western region of Kursk, where they will soon join the fight against Ukraine, senior U.S. officials said Thursday.
These troops have trained with the Russian military on infantry missions — including the use of artillery and drones and clearing trenches. Some have received Russian uniforms and equipment, U.S. officials said.
“We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press briefing.
Blinken spoke alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their South Korean counterparts, visiting Washington this week. Just hours before, North Korea conducted its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test, which Japan’s government said marked an advance in Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
The deployment to Kursk will stress Ukraine’s already tense defensive lines. Russia is suffering around 1,250 casualties a day in its offensives across the front, Austin said, but has kept gaining territory, now at a faster pace.
Still, Austin said Ukraine can keep defending the land it seized earlier this year in Kursk and hold steady elsewhere — with such high casualties per day, even 10,000 troops won’t last long, he argued.
“This 10,000 won’t come close to replacing the numbers that the Russians have lost,” Austin said.
The U.S. will announce more security aid to Ukraine within days, he continued, adding to the more than $60 billion in assistance already sent.
Meanwhile, North Korea is also continuing its military support for Russia with equipment, having provided hundreds of thousands of munitions and more than 1,000 missiles during the war, South Korea’s defense minister said in the press conference. In return, he said Wednesday at the Pentagon, North Korea will likely ask for Russian nuclear and military technology.
Given the U.S. has no direct relations with North Korea, and extensive sanctions already imposed on the country, it has little influence to stop Pyongyang’s assistance. Still, senior U.S. officials, including some in the State Department, have spoken with counterparts in China, urging it to intervene, Blinken said.
“They know well the concerns that we have and the expectation is that … they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities. So, we’ll see if they take action,” Blinken said, without specifying what channel the U.S. used to speak with China’s government.
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
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