NATO cannot confirm “at this stage” North Korea‘s deployment of troops to Russia, the alliance’s secretary-general Mark Rutte said today, responding to a question about South Korean intelligence information.
“At this stage, our official position is that we cannot confirm information that the North Koreans have been actively engaged as soldiers in the (Russian) war effort,” he told a news conference at Alliance headquarters. “But, of course, that can change,” he added, when asked about today’s confirmations from South Korean intelligence.
North Korea has deployed an initial contingent of 1,500 special forces troops to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and will send more soon, the South Korean agency said today.
The latter stated, with the support of satellite images, that it “detected from the 8th to the 13th (of October) that North Korea transferred its special forces to Russia on a transport ship of the Russian Navy, confirming the beginning of North Korea’s military participation.” .
Rutte clarified that he is in “close contact” with NATO’s Asian partners, including South Korea, which participated yesterday, Thursday, in a meeting of the Alliance at the level of defense ministers.
Asked yesterday about those North Korean soldiers, about whom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 10,000 of them were preparing to fight alongside Russian forces, the new secretary-general of the Alliance had already said he could not confirm that information. .
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