For those a bit confused, this is the first time the US military has agreed with Ukrainian and occupied Korean claims that the DPRK has sent troops intended for Ukraine itself and marks an escalation in propaganda rhetoric.
I've archived the source to avoid giving the AP clicks for uncritically carried western propaganda.
US issued meaningless threat that they would be considered combatants and targeted by weapons the west gave them if they fought there alongside Russian troops (duh, very confusing and kinda telling statement).
“Today, I can confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and that North Korean military units have been deployed to the Kursk region,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters. Rutte said the move represents “a significant escalation” in North Korea’s involvement in the conflict and marks “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”
Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will pile more pressure on Ukraine’s weary and overstretched army. It will also stoke geopolitical tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, Western officials say.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to reshape global power dynamics. He sought to build a counterbalance to Western influence with a summit of BRICS countries, including the leaders of China and India, in Russia last week. He has sought direct help for the war from Iran, which has supplied drones, and North Korea, which has shipped large amounts of ammunition, according to Western governments.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shrugged off Rutte’s comments and noted that Pyongyang and Moscow signed a joint security pact last June. He stopped short of confirming North Korean soldiers were in Russia.
The Ukraine regime is now claiming that these troops could be on the battlefield in days. A strange reversal from claims they were already on the battlefield and they'd captured some which happened a week ago. Time must be moving backwards there.
IMO this represents a pretext being invented to give Ukraine an excuse to use long-range weapons for deep strikes into Russia by saying it's fair game for the US to help as the DPRK is helping Russia (as if those two things are equal). In other words a desperate rush to nuclear war.
Sounds to me that Pentagon is doing trial balloons to see if they can justify escalation. The reality is that the west has been sending troops to fight in Ukraine for the past two years, so the precedent has already been set. Both Russia and DPRK are sovereign countries that just signed a mutual defence agreement. It's entirely within their right to help each other militarily if they want to.
That may be true. The problem is that neither Russia nor the DPRK seems to have considered the unintended consequences:
That's not very fair, is it?
lol
And I've been hearing that they are claming that folks from certain regions of Russia which have different ethnic traces, that can be mistaken by Asian, are being reported as north Korean
I've seen that mentioned as well. So far there's no actual proof that DPRK sent any soldiers into Russia, and the story the west has been floating continues to change suggesting that they're just making it up as they go. That said, there could be legitimate reasons why DPRK might want to send troops for training into Russia. They also might want to get their troops real combat experience that could be shared with the rest of the military. For example, Russian military ended up taking people from Wagner and assigning them to different units to share their experience, and apparently that led to a significant improvement in overall performance. It's entirely possible Koreans might want to do the same.
Yes I see this argument but the analysis that suggests that they didn't sent, or at the very least nearly as much sounds more compelling to me, being that it would be a hard pill to swallow back home for the families of the casualties there, being that there is no direct reason for the involvement of Korea in this war, the different language would also pose a far from irrelevant issue. Furthermore it downplays Russian capacity to solve their own issues, since Russia view this war as an internal affair, and an external help of 10 thousand men would likely be seen as a sort of.cry for help or some weakness of Russia. Therefore I have a hard time believing it, not impossible, but looks unlikely to me.
I agree, this is most likely nonsense, or the troops could be in Russia for training as opposed to being actively engaged in the fighting. It's also worth noting that it would complicate things for Russian army as well. Fighting with a different military introduces its own challenges, and there might be a language barrier. At the end of the day, it's not like Russia lacks its own troops. From the statements I saw from Putin and Lavrov, it looks like they're not outright denying this. And they're making the point that if it did happen that's between Russia and DPRK. So, they're using this story to highlight how serious the alliance is.
The most likely scenario is that the west wants to justify further escalation. One reason might be that they're running out of stuff to send, and they want occupied Korea to start pitching in. I saw articles suggesting this already being floated.
I'm 90% sure Putin, Lavrov and the DPRK spokesperson who gave more or less the same non-denial denial are just trolling the West, in much the same way as the Russian soldiers who are now waving the DPRK flag to troll the Ukrainians are doing. Still, they're correct, if this was happening it would be totally legitimate and justified. If NATO is allowed to send their "mercenaries" and "advisors" to Ukraine why shouldn't other countries actively help Russia? What's good for the goose...
If this whole story is indeed just a psyop made up by the West (and there is no evidence yet to indicate that it's not), then why bother denying it? Why play defense when any denial from Russia or the DPRK will be spun by the western propagandists as an admission since they assume anything from the Kremlin is a lie anyway, so then you may as well just lean into it, put the West on the defensive to try and justify why this is bad and any different from what they are doing. Put them off balance by turning it around on them.
Personally i maintain that this whole story is a nothing burger regardless which way it turns out. The only thing that matters is what further escalations NATO is going to justify using this story, and they would do that regardless of the actual truth of the situation.
very much agree
Yeah the specialist I heard said could be training but you could send a thousand people to train 10 is absurd for that purpose it's logistically unreasonable
Indeed, hence why I very much agree that the whole story is deeply implausible. It would be much easier for Russia to send some trainers to Korea rather than having Korea ship thousands of troops for training to Russia.
Yeah absolutely I sent my message not so much to convince you more as a source of information to anyone else listening that might have thought that the training argument is persuasive enough to believe or at least be on the fence but closer to believing, like it's impossible to know for sure, but I'm working with the assumption that it's a lie, and I believe it to be the reasonable thing to do.