North Korea has sent about 10,000 soldiers to Russia, where they are expected to hone their military training before joining President Vladimir Putin’s nearly 3-year-old war against neighboring Ukraine, Pentagon officials said Monday.
The deployment reflects rapidly warming ties between North Korea and Russia, which has caused deep unease in Washington and Seoul, South Korea. South Korean intelligence officials, who first reported the troop deployment plans, worry that the North’s troops and ammunition will bolster Russia’s campaign inside Ukraine while giving Kim Jong-un’s regime vital battlefield training and access to sophisticated Russian military technology.
The military personnel likely will join Russian forces operating near Ukraine over the next several weeks. Some of the North Korean troops have already moved closer to the battlefield, Pentagon officials said.
“We are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region near the border with Ukraine,” Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters at the Pentagon. She said the troops could be in action “within the next several weeks.”
Despite Ukraine’s recent incursion into Kursk, Russian forces have been making slow but steady progress along parts of the 600-mile front in eastern and southern Ukraine, recapturing villages and small towns held by Ukrainian forces. Russian officials said Sunday that they had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to breach a second part of the Russian border in an apparent bid to draw Russian forces away from the main battlefields.
Officials and private military analysts are divided over the impact of the North Korean troop infusion. Some say it will provide badly needed manpower, and others say the Kremlin’s appeal to Pyongyang reflects the growing strains of maintaining a war that has lasted far longer than Moscow expected.
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“This would mark a further escalation and highlight President Putin’s increasing desperation, as Russia has suffered extraordinary casualties on the battlefield,” Ms. Singh said. “This move would have serious implications for European and Indo-Pacific security as well.”
She said U.S. intelligence indicates the North Korean troops in Russia are moving toward the Kursk region, where Ukrainian fighters are holding the captured Russian territory. She couldn’t say whether they had arrived.
The Kursk deployment would keep the North Koreans in Russian sovereign territory, sidestepping legal questions over whether the Kim regime had effectively joined the Russian invasion of its neighbor.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte issued a statement saying Pyongyang had sent troops to support Russia and had forces operating in the Kursk region. U.S. officials previously said a sizable number of North Koreans were inside Russia, but Monday was the first time the Pentagon had confirmed the higher estimate of 10,000 soldiers.
Ukrainian officials said it shouldn’t surprise the West that North Korea has taken up arms for Russia. On Monday, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv had told everyone for weeks about the deployment. The government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has argued that North Korea’s entry into the war was just one more reason the U.S. and its allies should step up their support of Ukraine and lift restrictions on the use of allied-supplied weaponry.
“We haven’t seen a strong response. Now, the NATO secretary general confirmed this,” Mr. Sybiha said on X. “The bottom line: Listen to Ukraine. The solution: Lift restrictions on our long-range strikes against Russia.”
The North Korean troop deployment to Russia will almost certainly be high on the agenda this week when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet in Washington with their South Korean counterparts for the regular “2 plus 2” security and diplomatic discussions.
“It is an indication that Putin may be in more trouble than people realize,” Ms. Singh said.
‘Obvious escalation’
Last week, Mr. Zelenskyy called the North Korean deployment “an obvious escalating move by Russia.” Mr. Putin has obliquely hinted at the support from North Korea, but the Kremlin has not formally confirmed the move.
“The world can clearly see what Russia really wants — and that is a continuation of the war. That is why a principled and strong reaction of world leaders is needed,” Mr. Zelenskyy said on his Telegram messaging page. “The actual engagement of North Korea in hostilities should be met not with closed eyes and confused comments, but with tangible pressure on both Moscow and Pyongyang.”
More than 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in combat since Moscow launched its war against its smaller neighbor, officials said.
Russian legislators last week approved a comprehensive partnership treaty negotiated by Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim during two summits. The accord says that if either side faces “armed aggression,” the other side must provide military and other aid “by all available means.”
North Korean troops will be considered co-belligerents in the Russia-Ukraine war if they take military action on the front line. That would make them “fair game” for the other side, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last week.
The White House said the North Korean troops began moving toward Russia in the first two weeks of October. They moved by ship from the Wonsan area in North Korea to Vladivostok, Russia, Mr. Kirby said.
“These soldiers then traveled onward to multiple Russian military training sites in eastern Russia, where they are currently undergoing training,” he said.
Ms. Singh didn’t know whether the North Korean troops sent to Russia were front-line fighters or rear-area support personnel. She also didn’t know what weapons they might have brought to Russia.
Last month, Mr. Putin ordered the size of Russia’s army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active service members. This would make Russia’s army the second largest in the world after China’s.
“This is due to the number of threats that exist to our country along the perimeter of our borders,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The Kremlin wants to avoid a partial or general mobilization to fill the ranks because such a politically unpopular move could be costly for Mr. Putin’s ruling regime. He has backed generous pay and enlistment bonuses for the military that analysts say have further strained Russia’s economy.
“The recent appearance of North Korean troops in Russia, and their reported deployment to the combat zone in Kursk Oblast further suggests that Putin’s entire force-generation system is very tenuous,” said the Institute for the Study of War think tank. “The costs of fueling the war will increase as Russia continues to burn through manpower and material on the front line. Russian resources are finite, and Putin cannot reckon with these costs indefinitely.”
Mr. Rutte at NATO said the deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea threatens Asian and Euro-Atlantic security. It undermines peace on the Korean Peninsula and fuels the Russian war against Ukraine.
“Pyongyang has already supplied Russia with millions of rounds of ammunition and ballistic missiles that are fueling a major conflict in the heart of Europe and undermining global peace and security,” Mr. Rutte said Monday at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “In exchange, Putin is providing North Korea with military technology and other support to circumvent international sanctions.”
The foreign troop deployment is thought to be the first of its kind for the secretive, isolated North Korean regime since the end of the Korean War in the early 1950s and has been taken as a sign that Mr. Kim feels increasingly confident in his domestic position and the strength of his military forces.
The NATO chief was briefed by a delegation from South Korea led by Hong Jang-won, first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service. He told Mr. Rutte that North Korea was deploying units to Kursk more rapidly than anticipated, according to a report from the Yonhap News Agency.
“We [initially] reported to the government that it would take until early December, but it seems that both Russia and North Korea have accelerated their pace since the intelligence became public,” Mr. Hong said.
He said a “close military aide” to Mr. Kim also had been deployed to Russia, according to the Yonhap News Agency report.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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