About 8,000 North Korean troops are in Russia’s Kursk region preparing to join the war against Ukraine, the Biden administration said Oct. 31. In its most complete estimates of North Korean support for Russia’s war thus far, officials said there are some 10,000 North Korean troops now in all of Russia.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken disclosed the troop levels at a press conference alongside their South Korean counterparts following annual security talks.
South Korea was the first to cite North Korean troops traveling to Russia and the U.S. eventually confirmed the assessment. North Korea has provided millions of artillery shells and numerous ballistic missiles to Russia, according to U.S. and South Korean officials, but to this point, it had not provided troops. Participating in combat marks a major escalation of Pyongyang’s involvement.
It is not yet clear what Russia is offering in return. Moscow could provide Pyongyang help with conventional and even nuclear weapons technology, the South Korean government has suggested.
“We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” Blinken said.
“Russia has been training DPRK soldiers in artillery, UAVs, basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in front-line operations,” Blinken added, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
U.S. officials say the deployment of North Korean troops exposes Russian president Vladimir Putin’s desperate need for manpower. Russian forces are suffering more than 1,000 casualties per day, according to Western estimates, and the Kremlin wants to avoid the politically unpopular step of mobilizing more troops.
The U.S. has not said how it plans to respond, saying it is consulting with allies.
“Make no mistake, if these North Korean troops engage in combat or combat support operations against Ukraine, they would make themselves legitimate military targets,” Austin said.
Whether that was an indication the U.S. might change its policy on its military support for Ukraine is unclear. A range of American adversaries—North Korea, Iran, and, to a lesser extent, China—have been providing arms to Russia or assisting Russia’s defense industry.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly appealed for permission to use American-made long-range weapons to strike inside of Russia. But the Biden administration has not allowed that, seeking to avoid escalation with Russia and downplaying the military utility of those weapons.
South Korea, meanwhile, has raised the possibility that it could counter the North’s support for Russia by providing Ukraine with weapons made in South Korea.
“We need to see the level of involvement of the DPRK forces in Russia, and we also need to watch what kind of quid pro quo the DPRK will be receiving from Russia,” South Korea’s foreign minister Cho Tae-yul said in the joint press conference. “So we will have to watch that before making a decision as to the weapons support that we will be providing to Ukraine.”