- NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said North Korea has sent troops to fight with Russia.
- He presented the alliance as a sign of weakness, saying Putin could not keep up the invasion alone.
- Ukraine has said it expects to encounter North Korean troops on the battlefield within days.
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NATO’s chief said Russia can’t sustain its invasion of Ukraine without North Korean troops.
Mark Rutte said at a press conference on Monday that North Korean troops were deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine occupies territory.
He cited intelligence from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, its defense ministry, and NATO allies.
“Over 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Putin’s war, and he’s unable to sustain his assault in Ukraine without foreign support,” he said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
He called the deployment a sign of “growing desperation” in the war, some two and a half years in.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over the weekend that he was expecting to see North Korean troops in battle within days.
It would be the first time another nation had committed ground troops to the main war effort in Ukraine. Both sides have long received weapons and advice from their allies.
Last Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had information indicating that North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 troops to occupied areas of Ukraine.
The move has alarmed officials in South Korea, which last week condemned the deployment. It threatened to send weapons to Ukraine as part of a series of phased countermeasures.
Rutte said that NATO urged both Russia and North Korea to pull back immediately, citing risks to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.
“It undermines peace on the Korean peninsula and fuels the Russian war against Ukraine,” he said.
For his part, Putin last Friday seemed unmoved by external criticism, saying whether Russia deploys North Korean troops is Russia’s “sovereign decision.”
“This is our business,” he said, per Reuters.