The U.S. will not impose new limits on Ukraine’s use of American weapons if North Korea joins Russia’s war, the Pentagon said on Monday, as NATO said North Korean military units had been deployed to the Kursk region in Russia.
The North Korea deployment is fanning Western concerns that the 2-1/2-year conflict in Ukraine could widen, even as attention shifts to the Middle East.
It could signal how Russia hopes to offset mounting battlefield losses and continue making slow, steady gains in eastern Ukraine.
“The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters after talks with a South Korean delegation about the North Korean deployments.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the development was “very dangerous.”
The Pentagon estimated 10,000 North Korean troops had been deployed to eastern Russia for training, up from an estimate of 3,000 troops last Wednesday.
“A portion of those soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and 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 Oblast near the border with Ukraine,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, using a term for a Russian region.
The Kremlin had initially dismissed reports about a North Korean deployment as “fake news”. But Putin on Thursday did not deny North Korean troops were in Russia and said it was Moscow’s business how to implement a partnership treaty with Pyongyang.
The Russian leader also said over the weekend that Moscow will respond accordingly if the U.S. and its allies help Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, with Moscow seeing the West’s potential approval as “direct involvement of NATO” into the war.
The United States, however, has given no indication that it will approve Ukraine’s deep strike request.
A North Korean foreign ministry official did not confirm media reports about a troop deployment to Russia but said if Pyongyang had taken such action, he believed it would be in line with international norms.