(LONDON) — NATO confirmed on Monday that North Korean troops have been deployed to fight alongside their Russian counterparts in the Kursk region, the area within Russia where Ukraine has been waging an assault.

“The deployment of North Korean troops represents: one, a significant escalation in the DPRK ongoing involvement in Russia’s illegal war,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, using the acronym of the country’s official name — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Two, yet another breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions. And three, a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war,” he added.

He called on Russia and North Korea to “cease these actions immediately.”

North Korea has denied the reports of its forces being active in Russia or Ukraine.

“My delegation does not feel any need for comment on such groundless stereotyped rumors,” a North Korean representative to the United Nations said during a General Assembly session last week, as quoted by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly dismissed concerns of growing bilateral ties. “This cooperation is not directed against third countries,” he said last week.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, appeared to blame South Korea for the development, saying last week during a briefing that Seoul “should not have played along with the Kyiv regime.”

South Korea has provided direct humanitarian aid to Kyiv but not weapons. Earlier this month, Seoul said North Korean involvement in Ukraine represents a “grave security threat,” adding it would “respond by mobilizing all available means in cooperation with the international community.”

Rutte’s confirmation on behalf of NATO followed U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement last week that the U.S. had evidence that Pyongyang’s forces were already inside Russia.

“That is a very, very serious issue and it will have impacts not only in Europe, it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well,” Austin warned while visiting Rome, Italy.

“What exactly they’re doing” remains to be seen, Austin told journalists. But the defense secretary said there was “certainly” a “strengthened relationship, for lack of a better term, between Russia and DPRK.”

Austin noted that Pyongyang was already providing “arms and munitions to Russia and this is a next step.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told journalists last week that U.S. intelligence assessed that North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia during the first half of October.

The troops were believed to be undergoing a “basic kind of combat training” at multiple military training sites in the region, he said.

Kirby said it was unclear what Russia would provide to North Korea in return for its troops.

“We know Mr. Putin has been able to purchase North Korean artillery,” Kirby said. “He’s been able to get North Korean ballistic missiles, which he has used against Ukraine. And in return, we have seen, at the very least, some technology sharing with North Korea.”

Both Austin and Kirby suggested the use of Pyongyang’s soldiers on the battlefield would be a sign of the military strain on Moscow.

“You’ve heard me talk about the significant casualties that he has experienced over the last two-and-a-half years,” Austin said. “This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize.”

South Korea and Ukraine both raised concerns about North Korean troops heading to Russia before the U.S. and NATO confirmed their presence there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned earlier this month that Kyiv had “clear data” showing that North Korean personnel were joining the war.

“A new threat has emerged — the malign alliance between Russia and North Korea,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement posted to social media. “These are not just workers for production, but also military personnel,” the president said. “We expect a proper and fair response from our partners on this matter.”

“If the world remains silent now, and if we face North Korean soldiers on the front lines as regularly as we are defending against drones, it will benefit no one in this world and will only prolong this war,” Zelenskyy said.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers last week that around 3,000 North Korean soldiers were believed to have so far been deployed to Russia so far, with a total of 10,000 expected to be sent by December.

Discussing the briefing, opposition politician Park Sun-won told reporters that NIS assessed that Russian instructors expected casualties among the new arrivals, though consider them in good physical and mental shape. The North Korean troops, the Russians believed, lack understanding of certain elements of modern warfare including drone attacks, Park said.

The NIS also told the briefing it had indications that North Korean authorities were seeking to control and manage the families of those soldiers sent to Russia. Measures included isolating the soldiers’ families and even relocating them, the NIS said.

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