Putin Deploying North Korea Troops Justifies Long-Range Strikes—NATO Ally

Restrictions on long-range strikes within Russia by Western weapons supplied to Kyiv should be dropped following confirmation that Vladimir Putin is using North Korean troops to fight Ukraine, Lithuania’s president has said.

The comment by the head of state of the NATO member, Gitanas Nausėda, followed confirmation by the alliance Secretary-General Mark Rutte that North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.

Pyongyang has been supplying Russia with munitions to fight Ukraine but Rutte said the deployment marks “a significant escalation” in its involvement and was “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”

This illustrative image from October 18, 2023 shows North Korean soldiers at Pyongyang airport during Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit. North Korean troops are fighting for Moscow against Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. have…
This illustrative image from October 18, 2023 shows North Korean soldiers at Pyongyang airport during Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit. North Korean troops are fighting for Moscow against Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. have said.
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On Monday, the Pentagon said that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia who could join Moscow’s fight against Ukraine in the “next several weeks” amid concerns from South Korea and the U.S. that Moscow might offer technology in return to advance Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile program.

Nausėda said that the latest developments showed the need for Ukraine to be allowed to use weapons supplied by the West to hit targets inside Russia, which is at the moment prohibited by the U.S. and the U.K. for fear of escalation.

“North Korean troops are helping Russia in its war on #Ukraine. #NATO must respond by giving (Ukraine) all it needs to win: Long-range missiles,” he wrote on X.

Vilnius is among members of NATO’s Eastern members next to Russia which have warned about the security risk that Moscow poses, accusing it of conducting hybrid attacks such as GPS jamming of aircraft.

“Permission to strike military targets in Russia—Increased military aid Hesitation leads to escalation, not the other way around,” Nausėda added.

The previous day, the permanent representative of Lithuania to the alliance, Deividas Matulionis, told local news outlet LRT the alliance “start talking within NATO about the issue of the removal of geographical restrictions on long-range weapons.”

Matulionis added there should be “a further discussion on concrete steps on how to continue and increase military support to Ukraine,” in response to the deployment of North Korean troops in Russia.

Newsweek has contacted NATO, the Russian defense ministry and the Pentagon for comment.

South Korean intelligence has said that North Korean troops will probably be sent to the frontline, although Kyiv has not yet confirmed encountering these forces on the battlefield.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on Telegram that he held a phone call on Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol about “3,000 North Korean troops transferred to training facilities in the immediate vicinity of the combat zone.”

This number is expected to rise to around 12,000, Zelensky said on his Telegram which reiterates a figure previously provided by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency.