Ukraine, South Korea warn of Pyongyang troops aiding Russia

South Korea and Ukraine warned that North Korea is preparing to send a sizable number of troops to help Russia’s war on Ukraine in a sign of deepening military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that Pyongyang is preparing to send 10,000 troops even as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said there was no evidence North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight.

President Yoon Suk Yeol convened an emergency security meeting Friday to discuss the latest development, with a statement from his office calling it “serious security threat” to South Korea and the international community.

The meeting “shared information on the recent movement of North Korean troops into Russia and their support for the war,” the president’s office said. It didn’t specify how many personnel were sent or what their roles were.

There are conflicting claims about the size of the potential deployment, with the U.S. and its allies playing down the risks even as Yonhap News cited an unidentified official from South Korea’s spy agency as saying that Pyongyang recently decided to send 12,000 troops to Ukraine and that they have started to move.

The current size for North Korean deployment is in the low thousands, according to European government officials familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing classified information. Many of the personnel are behind the front lines for now, one of the people said.

Western officials are taking a much more cautious approach to ascertaining the scale of North Korea’s involvement in the conflict, with a key unanswered question being whether their function is more on the engineering side, for example, rather than direct combat.

Rutte said on Friday that allies are in contact with South Korea and other partners to get all the evidence, but that as of now he can’t confirm reports that North Korean soldiers are actively engaged in Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

“Even if North Korea is not physically there on the battlefield, then still they are helping to fuel Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine,” he said at a news conference in Brussels on Friday after a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

Ukraine officials have for weeks said that North Korean soldiers were fighting in Ukraine, without providing evidence.

The War Zone, a defense website, on Thursday cited Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence Kyrylyo Budanov as saying that there are almost 11,000 North Korean infantry troops training in eastern Russia with 2,600 poised to be deployed to Kursk region, he said. Ukraine captured part of the area in an incursion earlier this year.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said earlier this week that officials were seeing signs of increased material support from Pyongyang to Russia, both artillery shells and missiles, though reports of personnel being sent were still being evaluated.

Russia last week dismissed the reports of North Korean troop deployment as “one more fake.”

The deployment, if confirmed, would mark a major step in Pyongyang’s cooperation with Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed in June to provide immediate military assistance if one of them is attacked. North Korea maintains around 1.28 million active troops, according to South Korea’s defense white paper.

Washington and Seoul have accused Kim of sending artillery shells and ballistic missiles to Russia to aid the Kremlin, charges Pyongyang and Moscow deny.

In exchange for the arms, Russia has sent aid that has propped up North Korea’s economy and helped Kim advance his weapons programs, Seoul and Washington have said.

The development comes as Western governments are struggling to maintain public backing for Kyiv’s fight against Russia, which has dragged on for more then two-and-a-half years. The wariness has prompted pressure on Zelenskyy to begin to factor in an endgame to the conflict.

Zelenskyy presented his so-called “victory plan” to European Union leaders on Thursday, outlining his terms for a potential end to Russia’s invasion. He also reinforced his refusal to accept concessions on territorial gains or enter a process that would result in a frozen conflict.

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(With assistance from Alberto Nardelli and Ellen Milligan.)