On 28 October the Pentagon confirmed recent intelligence reports that North Korea has deployed around 10,000 troops to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Nato’s secretary-general Mark Rutte said that some North Korean units had already reached the Kursk region of south-western Russia, where Ukrainian troops are braced for an imminent assault to take back territory they have held since August. The deployment was “a significant escalation”, warned Rutte, and “a dangerous expansion” of the war.
The immediate impact will be felt in Ukraine. North Korean troops might not actually cross the border to fight in Ukrainian territory, where the Russian military is slowly grinding forwards in the eastern Donetsk region towards the strategic rail hub of Pokrovsk. Yet their arrival to the region will free up Russian soldiers and force the Ukrainian military to decide whether to reinforce its positions in Kursk or risk ceding the ground they currently control.
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