NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said North Korea is sending troops to fight Russia. He called the alliance a sign of weakness and said Putin cannot continue the invasion alone. Ukraine has said it expects to encounter North Korean forces on the country’s battlefields. day to day.
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NATO chief said Russia cannot sustain invasion of Ukraine without North Korean troops.
Mark Rutte said at a press conference on Monday that North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, which is occupied by Ukraine.
He cited information from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Defense, and NATO allies.
“More than 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in President Putin’s war, and he cannot sustain the offensive in Ukraine without foreign support,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He said the deployment was a sign of “increasing desperation” in the war, which has been around two and a half years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said over the weekend that he expected fighting with North Korean forces to begin within days.
It will be the first time that another country has committed ground troops to a major war effort in Ukraine. Both sides have long received weapons and advice from their allies.
Last Thursday, President Zelensky said he had received information indicating that North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 troops to the occupied territories of Ukraine.
The move alarmed South Korean authorities, who last week condemned the deployment. It threatened to send weapons to Ukraine as part of a series of gradual countermeasures.
Rutte said NATO has called on Russia and North Korea to withdraw immediately, citing risks to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.
“It undermines peace on the Korean Peninsula and incites Russia’s war against Ukraine,” he said.
Meanwhile, President Putin appeared unfazed by outside criticism, saying last Friday that whether Russia sends North Korean troops is Russia’s “sovereign decision.”
“This is our business,” he said, according to Reuters.
