North Korea’s mobilization with Russia to help in the war against Ukraine has the potential to prolong the two-and-a-half year conflict and attract others, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday (30 ).
About 10,000 North Korean forces have already been deployed to eastern Russia, wearing uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, Austin said, in what he added increasingly looked like a deployment to support Russia’s combat operations in the region. Kursk, near the border with Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces made a major incursion into Kursk in August and seized hundreds of square kilometers of territory there.
After talks with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon, Kim Yong-hyun, Austin called the mobilization a “dangerous and destabilizing escalation.”
“This has the potential to prolong the conflict or expand it,” the secretary told reporters.
Asked what he meant by widening the conflict and whether other countries could join the fight, Austin responded cautiously: “It could encourage others to take different types of action… There are a number of things that could happen.”
“If North Korea aids Russia’s war, North Korean troops can expect to be targeted by Ukrainian troops using weapons supplied by the United States and its allies, and some will likely die on the battlefield,” he added.
“If they are fighting alongside Russian soldiers, then they are co-belligerents, and we have every reason to believe they will be killed and injured as a result.”
South Korea has warned that Pyongyang would learn valuable lessons from its troops by engaging in combat and witnessing modern warfare by helping Russia, and this constitutes a direct military threat to South Korea.
Speaking alongside Austin, Kim warned that in exchange for the deployment, North Korea would likely seek Russian technology in tactical nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“I believe this could result in the escalation of security threats on the peninsula,” Kim said, speaking through a translator.
South Korea has said it is considering sending a team of military monitors to Ukraine to observe and analyze North Korea’s expected deployment, something Kim said would be a great opportunity to learn more about North Korean forces.
“If we don’t send our observers or analysis teams, that would mean we are not doing our job faithfully,” he said.
The conflict in Ukraine erupted when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022 and has since developed into a war of attrition fought largely along the front lines in eastern Ukraine, with numerous casualties on both sides.
The United States said the North Korean deployment could be further evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was having difficulty filling the military ranks after more than 600,000 casualties so far, according to U.S. estimates.
Lloyd Austin noted that Russia was already trying to replenish its weapons stocks by turning to North Korea and Iran.
“We know that Putin has juggled getting weapons from (North Korea) and Iran. Turning to a pariah state like North Korea just highlights how much trouble he is in,” the defense secretary said.
He and Kim called on the North Koreans to withdraw their forces. But it was unclear whether there were any steps Washington or its allies could take to prevent Pyongyang from joining the war.
“This is something we will continue to watch and continue to work with allies and partners to discourage Russia from deploying these troops in combat,” Austin said.
Putin did not deny the involvement of North Korean troops in the war, but said it was Russia’s problem how to implement a partnership treaty he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed in June.
North Korea did not recognize the mobilization, but said that if such a measure that the “world media” was talking about was true, it would be done in accordance with international law.
This content was originally published in Mobilization of North Korea could prolong war in Ukraine, warns the US on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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