BRUSSELS (AP) — North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train Ukraine and likely combat it within “the coming weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday, in a move Western leaders say will happen. to intensify the almost three-year war And Relations in the Indo-Pacific region have been shaken.

Some North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, and are believed to be heading toward the Kursk border area, where Russia has been active for years. The country is struggling to push back a Ukrainian invasion.

Earlier Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed to NATO recent Ukrainian intelligence reports that some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.

Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will increase pressure on Ukraine’s tired and overstretched military. It will also fuel geopolitical tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the broader Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, Western officials say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to reform global power dynamics. He tried to counterbalance Western influence with a summit conference of the BRICS countriesincluding the leaders of China and India, in Russia last week. He has sought direct help before the war from Iran, which has supplied drones, and North Korea, which Western governments say has shipped large quantities of ammunition.

Rutte told reporters in Brussels that the North Korean deployment represents “a significant escalation” in Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict and “a dangerous expansion of the Russian war.”

US President Joe Biden also called the deployment ‘dangerous’. Very dangerous.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet their South Korean counterparts in Washington later this week.

Singh said Austin and Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun will discuss the deployment of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine. There will be no restrictions on the use of US-supplied weapons against these forces, Singh said.

“When we see North Korean troops advancing to the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said, using the acronym for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shrugged off Rutte’s comments, noting that Pyongyang and Moscow signed a joint security pact last June. He stopped short of confirming that North Korean soldiers were in Russia.

Lavrov claimed that Western military instructors have long been covertly deployed in Ukraine to help the military use long-range weapons supplied by Western partners.

Ukraine, whose defenses are under heavy Russian pressure in the eastern Donetsk region, could see bleaker news from next week’s US presidential election. That could be a Donald Trump victory watch key US military aid decline.

In Moscow, the Defense Ministry announced on Monday that Russian forces have captured the village of Tsukuryne in Donetsk – the latest settlement to fall victim. the slow Russian attack.

Rutte spoke in Brussels after a high-level South Korean delegation, including top intelligence and military officials, as well as senior diplomats, briefed the alliance’s 32 national ambassadors at NATO headquarters.

Rutte said NATO is “in active consultation within the alliance, with Ukraine and with our Indo-Pacific partners” about the developments. He said he would soon speak with the president of South Korea and the defense minister of Ukraine.

“We continue to monitor the situation closely,” he said. He did not answer questions after the statement.

The South Koreans showed no evidence of North Korean troops in Kursk, according to European officials who were present for the 90-minute exchange and spoke to The Associated Press about the security briefing on condition of anonymity.

It is unclear how and when NATO allies might respond to North Korean involvement. For example, they could lift restrictions that prevent Ukraine from using Western-supplied weapons for long-range attacks on Russian territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed last Friday based on intelligence reports that there were North Korean troops on the battlefield within days.

He previously said his government had information that about 10,000 troops from North Korea were being prepared to join Russian forces in the fight against his country.

Days before Zelenskyy spoke, U.S. and South Korean officials said there was evidence North Korea had troops sent to Russia.

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Copp reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this report.

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