US says 10,000 North Korean soldiers now at Ukraine border

Although North Korean troops are undergoing training in Russian military facilities in the Far East, differences in language, culture, training, and warfighting doctrine, could diminish the effectiveness of North Korean forces until they are better integrated with Russian units,

Yeo said

North Korean troops will give Russia an immediate boost by sheer virtue of increasing Russian manpower on the front line."

Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution's Center for Asia Policy Studies, told Newsweek

They may be useful in pushing Ukrainian troops out of the areas of the Kursk region,

added Yeo

North Korean troops are conditioned with unwavering loyalty to their leadership and a unique psychological resilience cultivated by the regime," designed to fit a sense of "absolute sacrifice for the state" into Pyongyang's personnel

said Park

It is possible that some North Korean soldiers who surrender or are captured by Ukrainian forces may not want to return to Russia or North Korea,

Yeo argued

If these troops are sent into direct combat and suffer heavy casualties, it would effectively amount to a large-scale massacre,

Park said

Based on what other militaries do, these deployed troops will be well trained and equipped because they have an immediate "real world" mission and not an "on call" mission,

the CSIS evaluated

However, this psychological preparation may not translate effectively into practical resilience in the type of active combat scenarios currently seen in Ukraine, where they would face modernized and highly capable opposition in unfamiliar territory,

Park said

I think they know well the concerns that we have, and the expectations that, both in word and deed, they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities,

Mr Blinken said of Chinese officials

Even if everything that’s being said about the cooperation between Russia and North Korea by our Western colleagues is true, why is it that the United States and allies are trying to impose on everyone the flawed logic that they have the right to help the Zelensky regime,

he asked

You don’t get thousands of soldiers from North Korea if your war is going well,

remarked Justin Crump, a former British tank commander and head of strategic advisory firm Sibylline

I think it is in NATO's interest and certainly the United States' interests as a member of NATO that Asian North Korean communist troops should not be marching into a European country and attacking it,

he added

North Korean troops do not belong in Europe attacking another European nation,

Turner said

One of the reasons that Russia is turning to these North Korean troops is that it's desperate,

Blinken said

All of that strongly indicates that Russia intends to use these foreign forces in frontline operations in its war of choice against Ukraine,

Austin said

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

I do believe that they can hold on to the territory, if they choose to do that. They do have options,

Austin said of Ukrainian troops

I don’t think China openly supports this. But at the same time, they’re not going to do what’s necessary to stop it,

he said

We now assess that there are some 10,000 North Korean soldiers in total in Russia, and the most recent information indicates that as many as 8,000 of those North Korean forces have been deployed to the Kursk region,

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday

There will be a point where the interests of China will be violated, and it is at that point that China will begin to play a certain role,

Kim added