Ukraine Announces First Direct Clashes With North Korean Troops

The US and South Korea now say many thousands of North Korean troops are on the front lines, potentially engaging Ukrainian forces, with most of them located in Russia’s Kursk oblast, which has been under Ukrainian troop presence since the August cross-border offensive.

“More than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are currently in Russia, and we assess that a significant portion of them are deployed to front-line areas, including Kursk,” spokesman for South Korea’s defense ministry, Jeon Ha-kyou, told a briefing.

The Pentagon has said the same with spokesman Pat Ryder having stated Monday, “All indications are that they will provide some type of combat or combat support capability.” He added: “We would fully expect that the Ukrainians would do what they need to do to defend themselves and their personnel.”

The US administration has continued to warn that these foreign troops are “legitimate military targets” if they are found inside Ukraine and enter the fight.

Kiev has taken the allegations a step further, saying that already there’s been an exchange of fire between Ukrainian and North Korean troops. But it reportedly happened inside Russia.

“Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their forces had fired at North Korean soldiers in combat for the first time since their deployment by Russia to its western Kursk region,” FT writes of the new development.

The publication is calling the alleged instance “the first direct intervention by a foreign army since Russia’s full-scale invasion” as well as constituting an expansion of “what was already the largest land war in Europe since the second world war.”

“The first military units of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] have already come under fire in Kursk,” Andriy Kovalenko, Ukraine’s high-ranking ‘counter-disinformation’ official, announced on Telegram. Another top intelligence official said the same but did not provide or confirm any details of the alleged clash.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock on the “need for decisive action” in response to North Korea’s presence in the conflict.

“We urge Europe to realize that the DPRK troops are now carrying [out] an aggressive war in Europe against a sovereign European state,” Sybiha told a press conference.

The Pentagon estimates that North Korea has deployed 10 to 12 thousand troops in Russia’s Kursk region and warns that the troops would become legitimate military targets, if they “engage in combat support operations against Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/QtEnpKyCOF

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 5, 2024

The Russian and North Korean governments have still not overtly or definitively confirmed the large deployment – especially not inside Ukraine – but have have strongly hinted at it, pointing to the defense pact inked between Presidents Putin and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang this past summer.

President Zelensky has meanwhile been using the issue to demand that the US and NATO lift all restrictions on use of Western supplied long-range missiles against Russian territory. But the Western allies have not been responsive to the issue.