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North Korean troops have come under fire after joining Russia’s war, Ukrainian officials said.
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Ukraine’s defense minister said it was a small-scale clash with soldiers mixed in with Russians.
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The Pentagon says that North Korean troops engaged in combat would make them a fair target in the war.
North Korean troops are already seeing military action in Russia’s Kursk region, according to Ukrainian officials.
“The first North Korean troops have already come under fire in Kursk Oblast,” Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation said on Telegram on Monday, per The New Voice of Ukraine’s translation.
Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, confirmed the report in an interview with South Korean national broadcaster KBS on Tuesday.
He said that it was a small-scale clash with North Korean soldiers who had been mixed in with Russian troops.
The skirmish means that North Korea has officially joined the war, Umerov told the outlet.
An unnamed senior Ukrainian intelligence official had also confirmed the report to the Financial Times on Monday, but had declined to provide further details.
Ukrainian troops have held large areas of Kursk since early August, after Kyiv launched a surprise cross-border offensive in the region.
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that 8,000 North Korean troops had been moved to Kursk, and he predicted that they would enter the fighting shortly.
“We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” he said.
At the same briefing, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that if North Korean troops took part in fighting or provided combat support they would become “legitimate military targets.”
Kovalenko’s statement on Monday was the first to claim that North Korean troops were now actively fighting alongside Russian troops and against Ukraine.
US Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Pentagon briefing on Monday that the US was “looking into” the reports.
Last month, South Korean intelligence said that 1,500 North Korean troops had been shipped to Russia for training and likely deployment in the war.
This came after deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On Saturday, Ukrainian intelligence shared details of the military equipment it says Russia has issued to North Korean troops, including mortars, rifles, and machine guns.
North Korea experts say the partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang is mutually beneficial: While Russia gets much-needed troops, Kim Jong Un is likely gaining an economic boost for his country as well as military know-how from its dealings with Russia.
Representatives from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Defence Intelligence of Ukraine did not respond to a Business Insider request for comment.
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