Ukrainian troops have entered combat against North Korean soldiers in Kursk, a member of the country’s national security and defense council claimed.
Andrii Kovalenko, a high-ranking official in the council’s anti-disinformation branch, announced Monday via the social media app Telegram that “the first [North Korean] military units have been struck in Kursk.”
It marks the first instance of Ukrainian leadership claiming to have directly engaged with North Korean soldiers on the battlefield following weeks of intelligence indicating that North Korean military personnel were gathering in Russia.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told the Washington Examiner that North Korean involvement in the conflict is both logistically worrying for Ukraine and a sign of an increasingly desperate Kremlin.
“The much larger country with even larger economic advantage by GDP measurements and with the much larger population failed in its invasion of Ukraine,” Herbst said of the development. “It was going to be a cakewalk, and even our intelligence agencies came out with that very stupid prognosis. So that’s a Russian failure. But it’s also true that conceivably, unopposed, the North Korean intervention can tip the balance.”
According to intelligence shared by the United States, South Korea, Ukraine, and the United Nations, approximately 10,000 North Korean military personnel have been transported into Russia to aid the invasion.
Those troops on their own present a complication for much smaller, less populous Ukraine — but a larger series of deployments into the conflict by the North Korean regime could prove disastrous.
“It first depends upon how deep are they going to go,” Herbst told the Washington Examiner. “Is 10,000 the first of an installment that’s gonna be 10 or 15 times larger? In that case, yeah, it could tip the balance.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has warned that the North Korean soldiers are being outfitted with Russian uniforms and weaponry in order to better blend in with its military, a sign that both nations are aware of the alarm their cooperation is raising worldwide.
Herbst asserts that the partnership is both economically and diplomatically advantageous for North Korea, which is finding a seat at the table with other regional powers as it pushes back against U.S. hegemony.
“North Korea and Russia and China and Iran are acting more and more in concert, although on an ad hoc basis, driven by an animus against the United States and our allies and partners,” Herbst told the Washington Examiner. “It’s absolutely clear that the major effort being made against the United States and its allies and partners is Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.”
He continued, “Russia has been conducting that war from the beginning of at least the big invasion with help — first of Iran, then North Korea with arms, and of course economically and [technologically] with the help of China.”
While North Korea remains deeply impoverished and relies on outside assistance to maintain its economic engines, the hermit kingdom boasts advanced nuclear capabilities and missile technology that makes it a valuable ally to its neighbors, Russia and China.
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China has backed away from weighing in on the conflict in recent weeks, stating that Russian-North Korean cooperation is a “matter for themselves” to sort out.
“We have noted some reports related to this and responses from various parties recently,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lin Jian told the press. “[North Korea] and Russia are two independent sovereign states, and how to develop bilateral relations is a matter for themselves. China is not aware of the specifics of bilateral exchanges and cooperation between [North Korea] and Russia.”
