North Korea deployment could prolong, widen Ukraine war, US warns

Pentagon chief calls such a move a 'dangerous and destabilizing escalation'

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WASHINGTON - North Korea's deployment to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine has the potential to lengthen the already 2½-year-old conflict and draw in others, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Oct. 30.

Some 10,000 North Korean troops have already been sent to eastern Russia, wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, Mr. Austin said, in what he added increasingly looked like a deployment to support Russia's combat operations in the Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion into Kursk in August and hold hundreds of square kilometers of territory there.

After talks with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon, Mr. Kim Yong-hyun, Mr. Austin called the deployment a "dangerous and destabilizing escalation," adding that "it does have the potential of lengthening the conflict or broadening the conflict."

Asked what he meant by broadening the conflict, and whether other countries might join the fighting, Mr. Austin responded cautiously: "It could encourage others to take action, different kinds of action. There are a number of things that could happen."