U.S. says there’s ‘evidence’ North Korea sent troops to Russia

The U.S. defence caput said Wednesday determination is grounds that North Korea has sent troops to Russia, calling it a “very, precise superior issue” if they articulation the warfare successful Ukraine connected Moscow’s broadside and informing of imaginable consequences.

South Korea’s spy chief, meanwhile, told lawmakers that 3,000 North Korean troops are present successful Russia receiving grooming connected drones and different instrumentality earlier being deployed to battlefields successful Ukraine.

The U.S. had not antecedently formally confirmed North Korea’s reported unit dispatch.

“We are seeing grounds that determination are North Korean troops” that person gone to Russia, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters during a sojourn to Rome. “What precisely they’re doing — near to beryllium seen.”

He added: “If they’re co-belligerents, their volition is to enactment successful this warfare connected Russia’s behalf, that is simply a very, precise superior issue, and it volition person impacts not lone successful Europe, it volition besides interaction things successful the Indo-Pacific.”

He called it a “next step” aft the North has provided Russia with arms, and said Pyongyang could look consequences for aiding Russia directly. He did not supply details, saying analysts were assessing the situation.

South Korean quality archetypal publicized reports that the Russian navy had taken 1,500 North Korean peculiar warfare troops to Russia this month, portion Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his authorities had quality that 10,000 North Korea soldiers were being prepared to articulation the invading Russian forces.

Russia and North Korea person denied the unit movements. They person sharply boosted their practice successful the past 2 years, and successful June they signed a large defence woody requiring some countries to usage each disposable means to supply contiguous subject assistance if either is attacked.

South Korean officials interest that Russia whitethorn reward North Korea by giving it blase weapons technologies that could boost its atomic and rocket programs that people South Korea. South Korea said Tuesday it would see supplying weapons to Ukraine successful effect to the reported unit dispatch.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte connected Tuesday said North Korea sending troops to Ukraine would people a “significant escalation,” and said helium asked South Korea’s president to nonstop experts to Brussels adjacent week to little the subject alliance.

On Wednesday, South Korean National Intelligence Service Director Cho Tae-yong told lawmakers that different 1,500 North Korean troops person entered Russia, according to lawmaker Park Sunwon, who attended Cho’s closed-door briefing.

Cho told lawmakers his bureau assessed that North Korea aims to deploy a full of 10,000 troops to Russia by December, Park told reporters.

Park cited Cho arsenic saying the 3,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia person been divided among aggregate subject bases. Cho told lawmakers that NIS believes they person yet to beryllium deployed successful battle, Park said.

Also speaking jointly astir the briefing, lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun said the NIS recovered that the Russian subject is teaching those North Korean soldiers however to usage subject instrumentality specified arsenic drones.

Lee cited the NIS main arsenic saying Russian instructors person precocious opinions of the morale and carnal spot of the North Korean soldiers but deliberation they volition yet endure dense causalities due to the fact that they deficiency an knowing of modern warfare. Lee, citing Cho, said Russia is recruiting a ample fig of interpreters.

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Lee said NIS has detected signs that North Korea is relocating household members of soldiers chosen to beryllium sent to Russia to peculiar sites to isolate them. The NIS main told lawmakers that North Korea hasn’t disclosed its unit dispatch to its ain people.

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate head, Kyrylo Budanov, told the online subject quality outlet The War Zone connected Tuesday that North Korean troops were to get to Russia’s Kursk portion connected Wednesday to assistance Russian troops warring disconnected a Ukrainian incursion.

Last week, South Korea’s spy bureau said North Korea had sent much than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and different accepted arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.

Reports that the North is sending troops to Russia stoked information jitters successful South Korea. It has shipped humanitarian and fiscal enactment to Ukraine, but it has truthful acold avoided straight supplying arms successful enactment with its argumentation of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged successful conflicts.

North Korea has 1.2 cardinal troops, 1 of the largest lasting armies successful the world, but it hasn’t fought successful large-scale conflicts since the 1950-53 Korean War. Experts question however overmuch North Korean troops would assistance Russia, citing a shortage of conflict experiences.

Experts accidental North Korea wants Russia’s economical enactment and its assistance to modernize the North’s outdated accepted weapons systems arsenic good arsenic its high-tech weapons exertion transfers.

Following a gathering successful London with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said it looks “highly likely” that North Korean troops person been deployed to Russia. Pistorius said it underscores the challenges of dealing with planetary conflicts that are “getting much and much person to each different and linked to each other.”

—Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung successful Seoul, Illia Novikov and Hanna Arhirova successful Kyiv, Ukraine, Danica Kirka successful London and Jari Tanner successful Helsinki contributed to this report.