About 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Russia on the border with Ukraine, the US secretary of state has said, warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”.
Antony Blinken said the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.
Blinken told a press conference that the North Korean troops had received Russian training in “artillery, UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in frontline operations”.
The announcement was the clearest statement yet from the US that it anticipated the first large-scale deployment of foreign troops into the Russia-Ukraine war since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The deployment could expand the largest land war in Europe since the second world war into a multi-region conflict, tying in the rising tensions in the Korean peninsula between North and South Korea.
“One of the reasons that Russia is turning to these North Korean troops is that it’s desperate,” Blinken said during the press conference as he met South Korea’s foreign and defence ministers in Washington. “Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine. Now he’s turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness.”
Blinken’s comments came hours after North Korea test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, highlighting a potential advancement in its missile technology as questions continue over a potential agreement between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un for North Korea’s support in the war against Ukraine in exchange for Russian military or space technology.
North Korea last test-fired a ballistic missile in December 2023. Thursday’s launch flew for 86 minutes – the longest recorded flight time to date – and may indicate that the country was seeking to develop missiles that could carry larger payloads for a potential strike against its enemies in the west.
US officials from the White House, state department and Pentagon have all warned Russia and North Korea against deploying North Korean troops in battle. If they did, Blinken said, they would become a “legitimate military target”.
Speaking before a UN security council meeting this week, the US envoy to the UN said that if Pyongyang’s forces “enter Ukraine in support of Russia, they will surely return in body bags”.
Ukraine’s president had earlier warned that North Korean troops could join the fight against Ukraine “within days” and that the deployment was meant to be a test of the US’s and South Korea’s responses.
Speaking in an interview on Wednesday with the South Korean radio outlet KBS, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said North Korean troops had not yet engaged in direct combat with Ukrainian forces but were preparing to be deployed.
Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to deploy foreign troops in order to minimise casualties among Russian troops and that Russia would “station North Korean troops on the frontlines, and will sacrifice them more than Russian troops”.
Asked when that may be, he said: “I believe this will occur not within months, but within days.”
He also suggested North Korea could send more troops to Russia based upon how the US and South Korea respond.
“With this deployment of North Korean troops, Putin is currently testing the response of South Korea and the Nato member nations,” Zelenskyy said in the interview from the city of Uzhhorod. “After gauging their response, he will determine whether to expand the deployment.”
The Pentagon and South Korea’s defence minister issued a warning to Pyongyang on Thursday to remove their troops from Russia, with the US warning that North Korean troops would become “legitimate military targets” if they fought against Ukraine directly.
North Korean troops would be “co-belligerents, and you have every reason to believe that … they will be killed and wounded as a result of battle,” the US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, said on Wednesday.