Russia’s decision to bring North Korean troops to shore up its war-weary forces has Ukraine’s allies realizing they have few options to respond without escalating the conflict even more.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed the deployment following a briefing by high-ranking South Korean officials Monday in Brussels — and called it a “significant escalation” of Pyongyang’s involvement in Russia’s war. Over the weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters “we have options, it depends on what they do.”
North Korea is dispatching about 10,000 troops to the western Russian region of Kursk, where Ukrainian forces made gains this year, and additional deployments are possible, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters Monday.
What option to employ in response may divide the U.S. and its allies. They will have to decide whether to match escalation with escalation over North Korea’s step, which officials say marks a turning point in Russia’s war on Ukraine as it broadens into an increasingly global one with more outside actors.
“NATO calls on Russia and the DPRK to cease these actions immediately,” Rutte told reporters, referring to North Korea by its formal initials, and said the move to send troops to Kursk represents a threat to European security as well as to the Indo-Pacific region.
South Korea is considering whether to send weapons directly to Ukraine, reversing a policy banning lethal aid to the country at war, according to a senior South Korean official.
If some of Seoul’s vast stores of artillery shells started heading directly to Kyiv, alongside Pyongyang’s supplies to Russia, that would result in the war drawing upon two of the world’s largest artillery forces.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on social media earlier in October that a French idea raised earlier this year to send western personnel to Ukraine “should now be revisited, better late than never.” That idea previously ran up against concerns the trainers and other military personnel could be targeted by Moscow.