Ukraine Russia war: North Korea ‘sends 3,000 troops’ to bolster Putin’s forces

It is not up to Germany to dictate to other countries how they should support Ukraine, a German government spokesperson said on Wednesday, amid debate over South Korea’s response to the possible deployment of North Korean troops in support of Russia.

“I don’t think it is up to us here to tell other countries how they should organise their support for Ukraine,” the spokesperson told a press conference in Berlin, when asked about the government’s position on the issue.

A spokesperson for the German foreign office said South Korea was a close partner of Germany and that the countries had regular contact on security policy, without going into detail.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US believes that at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers travelled by ship to Vladivostok, Russia’s largest Pacific port, in early to mid-October.

“These soldiers then traveled onward to multiple Russian military training sites in eastern Russia, where they are currently undergoing training,” Mr Kirby said. “We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military, but this is certainly a highly concerning probability.”

Mr Kirby said they could go to western Russia and then engage in combat against Ukraine’s forces, but both he and defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the US continues to assess the situation. Exactly what the North Korean troops are doing in Russia was “left to be seen,” Mr Austin told reporters in Rome.

He added: “If they’re co-belligerents, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only in Europe, it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific.”

Mr Kirby warned, however, that “I can tell you one thing, though, if they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game.” He said a key question is what North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is getting out of this.

The United States, South Korea, Britain and Ukraine say North Korea has sent troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that the White House said is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

What can the UN Security Council do if its sanctions on North Korea are being violated?

What can UNSC do if its sanctions on North Korea are being violated?

North Korea has been under UN Security Council sanctions since 2006 and the measures have been steadily strengthened over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The Security Council has a North Korea sanctions committee – made up of the 15 council members, including Russia – to “examine and take appropriate action on information regarding alleged violations.” It operates by consensus and can designate individuals and entities.

A Security Council member could also propose action through the adoption of a resolution, but that would require at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the Brics summit has backfired on Moscow as Russian officials have failed to win support for its invasion of Ukraine as Putin faced direct calls to end the war.

“The Brics summit, which Russia planned to use to split the world, has once again demonstrated that the world majority remains on the side of Ukraine in its quest to guarantee a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace,” the ministry said.

Ukraine is preparing as though combating North Korea in its territory is inevitable.

American and South Korean officials confirmed that there’s evidence North Korea has dispatched troops to Russia in a potential escalation of war with Ukraine.

An injection of 10,000 North Korean troops, which is what both Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence have claimed, “could significantly destabilise Ukraine’s defence there and greatly accelerate the advancement of Russian forces,” said Glib Voloskyi, an analyst from a Ukrainian think tank, Come Back Alive Initiatives Center.

Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, a hotline encouraging Russian soldiers to surrender, published a video in Korean calling for North Korean soldiers to give up.“We call for the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army, who were sent to help the Putin regime. You should not die senselessly on someone else’s land. There is no need to repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!”

North Korean troops were arriving in Russia’s Kursk region as early as yesterday to help Russian troops fight off a Ukrainian border incursion, Ukraine military intelligence directorate head Kyrylo Budanov told the online military news outlet The War Zone.

Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters North Korean officers and technical personnel have already been spotted in Russian-occupied territories. He did not specify when.“I believe they sent officers first to assess the situation before deploying troops,” Mr Zelensky said.

He has cautioned that the participation of a third country could escalate the conflict into a world war. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said that it would be a “very, very serious issue” if Pyongyang indeed did join the war on Russia’s side.

“What exactly they’re doing — left to be seen,” Mr Austin said. Neither Mr Austin nor South Korean National Intelligence Service director Cho Tae-yong provided details about how they knew about the North Korean troops, and many questions surround the impact of North Korean participation.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said deploying any foreign forces in the Ukraine conflict would inevitably lead to an escalation.

The comments came as the US said for the first time it had seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia and South Korean lawmakers said about 3,000 soldiers had been sent.

Mr Lukashenko dismissed the notion that North Korea had dispatched troops to be deployed alongside Russian forces in the more than two-and-a-half year old war in Ukraine.

“Rubbish,” Lukashenko told the BBC on the sidelines of the summit of the Brics grouping of nations. “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.”

Deploying foreign troops, he said, “would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line.”

And that would prompt Ukraine’s allies to point to foreign involvement “so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine.”

Inviting Ukraine to join Nato can not and will not be a matter for discussion in talks with Russia, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

She urged the West to stop supplying weapon to Kyiv, claiming that a stoppage would end the war.

Russian forces captured the villages of Serebrianka and Mykolaivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Defence Ministry said yesterday, as military blogs reported advances of Moscow’s troops near key frontline towns.

Ukraine’s military made no acknowledgement of either village falling into Russian hands, but said both areas of the front were gripped by intense fighting.

Bloggers on both sides reported an intense Russian drive on the town of Selydove.

The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces had repelled all 12 Russian attacks undertaken in an area around Serebrianka just inside the northern border of Donetsk region.

It said heavy fighting gripped towns on the approach to Pokrovsk, the next key logistical town in the Russian military’s steady push westward in Donetsk region.

The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Ukrainian troops were facing overwhelming odds defending Selydove – which lies southwest of Mykolaivka. Capturing Selydove would pave the way for a Russian advance on Pokrovsk.

DeepState said Russian forces with “the advantage of endless resources of infantry and equipment” were putting pressure on Ukrainian defences and advancing from both north and south.