The Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, confirmed this Monday what the United States already advanced a few days ago: that North Korea has sent troops to Russia and that There are already “North Korean units” deployed in the Russian Kursk regiontaken by Ukraine this summer and which Moscow is trying to recover. The North Korean military presence constitutes a “dangerous expansion” of the Russian war offensive in Ukraine and a flagrant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, the head of the Atlantic Alliance has warned.
“I can confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia and that North Korean military units are deployed in the Kursk region,” Rutte said in a brief public appearance in Brussels. Former Dutch Prime Minister has urged Pyongyang and Moscow to end “immediately” to actions that imply a “dangerous expansion of Russia’s illegal war.”
His short statement from NATO headquarters came after being informed of the situation by a high-level South Korean delegation, composed among others of members of Seoul’s intelligence and the Ministry of Defense. The senior South Korean representatives are in Brussels to also report on the situation to the ambassadors of the Atlantic Alliance (the representatives of the allied countries within the organization) and to their partners in the Indo-Pacific region: Australia, Japan and New Zealand, as well as South Korea.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky was the first to warn that North Korea is preparing thousands of soldiers to participate in the war against Ukraine on Russia’s side. He did it in Brussels just 10 days ago, during the last summit of EU heads of state and government. Initially taken with great caution, the information was confirmed shortly afterwards by Washington – which estimates that up to 3,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russian military bases – and, indirectly, by the Kremlin: during the BRICS summit At the end of last week in the Russian city of Kazan, Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the information from Seoul by declaring that the satellite images that South Korea has presented as evidence are a reliable indication: “The photographs They are something very serious. If there are photographs, it means they reflect something,” he declared.
Those same days, Rutte commented on the social network X: “For North Korea to send troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine would mean a significant escalation” in the conflict. A warning that the Dutchman has reiterated now that he has, he says, the data that confirms the worst fears.
“Deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea “It constitutes a threat to Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security, undermines peace on the Korean Peninsula and fuels the Russian war against Ukraine,” denounced Rutte, who recalled that it is not the first North Korean support for Moscow. “Pyongyang has already provided Russia with millions of projectiles and ballistic missiles that are fueling a major conflict in the heart of Europe and undermining global peace and security,” recalled the NATO Secretary General. Moscow’s payment to Kim Yong-un’s regime is no less worrying, he added: “In exchange, Putin is providing North Korea with military technology and other aid to evade international sanctions.”
For Rutte, however, the confirmation of the presence of North Korean soldiers in Russia has a second reading: “It is a sign of Putin’s growing desperation” that, with more than 600,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the last two and a half years of war, “is no longer incapable of maintaining its assault on Ukraine without foreign help.”
The European Union has also made clear its deep concern about a maneuver that, in the words of the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, constitutes a “unilateral hostile act by North Korea with serious consequences for the peace and security of North Korea.” Europe and the world. The cooperation of Pyongyang and Moscow is also another example of “how Russia is spreading instability and escalation in the region and throughout the globe,” he added in a statement issued last week, when the first confirmations of the sending of soldiers emerged. North Koreans to Russia.
