The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference there are around 8,000 North Korean troops that has been deployed in the Kursk region to fight Ukrainian forces.
Blinken said that they are expecting fighting to break out between Ukraine and North Korean soldiers to break out in “in the coming days.”
He added, “One of the reasons that Russia is turning to these North Korean troops is that it’s desperate. (Vladimir) Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine.
“Now he’s turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness.”
Over the past few weeks Russia has been training the North Korean soldiers to use drones, artillery, trench clearing and other operations, this means Putin “fully” intends to use Pyongyang’s troops.
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Blinken said, “Should these troops engage in combat or combat support operations against Ukraine, they would become legitimate military targets.”
He added, “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 that intelligence shows there is a total of 10,000 DPRK soldiers in Russia, 8,000 are in the Kursk Oblast region close to the Ukrainian border.
The Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin seeing North Korean troops readying to fight for Putin “just underscores how badly Putin’s war has gone.”
“This 10,000 won’t come close to replacing the numbers that the Russians have lost.”
He warned, “Make no mistake, if these North Korean troops engage in combat or combat support operations against Ukraine, they would make themselves legitimate military targets.”
