SYDNEY: The United States expects that thousands of North Korean troops massing in Russia will “soon” enter combat against Ukraine, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said Saturday.
About 10,000 North Korean soldiers were believed to be based in the Russian border region of Kursk, Austin thought, where they were being “integrated into the Russian formations”.
“Based upon what they’ve been trained on, the way they’ve been integrated into the Russian formations, I fully expect to see them engaged in combat soon,” Austin told reporters during a stopover in Pacific nation Fiji.
He said he had “not seen significant reporting” of North Korean forces being “actively engaged in combat” to date.
South Korean government officials on Thursday claimed Russia has provided Pyongyang with oil, anti-air missiles and economic help in exchange for the troops Washington and Seoul have accused it of sending, AFP reported.
Kyiv has warned that Moscow, alongside the North Korean soldiers, has now amassed a 50,000-strong force to wrest back parts of the border region seized by Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine claimed swathes of Kursk in August during a lightning offensive even as its troops were thinly stretched in the Donetsk region, which has borne the brunt of nearly three years of fighting, AFP reported.
According to Russian and western media reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would conduct more tests of its new Oreshnik missile in combat and had a stock ready for use, a day after firing the ballistic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged world to respond firmly after the Russian missile strike on Thursday. He said his nation was working on developing new types of air defence to counter new risks after Russia’s deployment of a new ballistic missile.
The Kremlin stated that the strike on a Ukrainian military facility was designed to warn the west that Russia would respond to moves by the US and the United Kingdom to allow Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.
