Ukraine Russia war: North Korea ‘sends 3,000 troops’ to bolster Putin’s forces

The United States, South Korea, Britain and Ukraine say North Korea has sent troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that the White House said is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

What can the UN Security Council do if its sanctions on North Korea are being violated?

WHAT HAPPENS IF THERE IS A VIOLATION?

North Korea has been under UN Security Council sanctions since 2006 and the measures have been steadily strengthened over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The Security Council has a North Korea sanctions committee – made up of the 15 council members, including Russia – to “examine and take appropriate action on information regarding alleged violations.” It operates by consensus and can designate individuals and entities.

A Security Council member could also propose action through the adoption of a resolution, but that would require at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the Brics summit has backfired on Moscow as Russian officials have failed to win support for its invasion of Ukraine as Putin faced direct calls to end the war.

“The Brics summit, which Russia planned to use to split the world, has once again demonstrated that the world majority remains on the side of Ukraine in its quest to guarantee a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace,” the ministry said.

Ukraine is preparing as though combating North Korea in its territory is inevitable.

American and South Korean officials confirmed that there’s evidence North Korea has dispatched troops to Russia in a potential escalation of war with Ukraine.

An injection of 10,000 North Korean troops, which is what both Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence have claimed, “could significantly destabilise Ukraine’s defence there and greatly accelerate the advancement of Russian forces,” said Glib Voloskyi, an analyst from a Ukrainian think tank, Come Back Alive Initiatives Center.

Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, a hotline encouraging Russian soldiers to surrender, published a video in Korean calling for North Korean soldiers to give up.“We call for the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army, who were sent to help the Putin regime. You should not die senselessly on someone else’s land. There is no need to repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!”

North Korean troops were arriving in Russia’s Kursk region as early as yesterday to help Russian troops fight off a Ukrainian border incursion, Ukraine military intelligence directorate head Kyrylo Budanov told the online military news outlet The War Zone.

Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters North Korean officers and technical personnel have already been spotted in Russian-occupied territories. He did not specify when.“I believe they sent officers first to assess the situation before deploying troops,” Mr Zelensky said.

He has cautioned that the participation of a third country could escalate the conflict into a world war. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said that it would be a “very, very serious issue” if Pyongyang indeed did join the war on Russia’s side.

“What exactly they’re doing — left to be seen,” Mr Austin said. Neither Mr Austin nor South Korean National Intelligence Service director Cho Tae-yong provided details about how they knew about the North Korean troops, and many questions surround the impact of North Korean participation.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said deploying any foreign forces in the Ukraine conflict would inevitably lead to an escalation.

The comments came as the US said for the first time it had seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia and South Korean lawmakers said about 3,000 soldiers had been sent.

Mr Lukashenko dismissed the notion that North Korea had dispatched troops to be deployed alongside Russian forces in the more than two-and-a-half year old war in Ukraine.

“Rubbish,” Lukashenko told the BBC on the sidelines of the summit of the Brics grouping of nations. “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.”

Deploying foreign troops, he said, “would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line.”

And that would prompt Ukraine’s allies to point to foreign involvement “so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine.”

Inviting Ukraine to join Nato can not and will not be a matter for discussion in talks with Russia, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

She urged the West to stop supplying weapon to Kyiv, claiming that a stoppage would end the war.

Russian forces captured the villages of Serebrianka and Mykolaivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Defence Ministry said yesterday, as military blogs reported advances of Moscow’s troops near key frontline towns.

Ukraine’s military made no acknowledgement of either village falling into Russian hands, but said both areas of the front were gripped by intense fighting.

Bloggers on both sides reported an intense Russian drive on the town of Selydove.

The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces had repelled all 12 Russian attacks undertaken in an area around Serebrianka just inside the northern border of Donetsk region.

It said heavy fighting gripped towns on the approach to Pokrovsk, the next key logistical town in the Russian military’s steady push westward in Donetsk region.

The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Ukrainian troops were facing overwhelming odds defending Selydove – which lies southwest of Mykolaivka. Capturing Selydove would pave the way for a Russian advance on Pokrovsk.

DeepState said Russian forces with “the advantage of endless resources of infantry and equipment” were putting pressure on Ukrainian defences and advancing from both north and south.

Nato allies are actively discussing the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia, a Nato spokesperson has said.

“Allies have confirmed evidence of a DPRK troop deployment to Russia”, spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said, without specifying which allies.

“We are actively consulting within the Alliance on this matter, and the North Atlantic Council will receive a briefing from [South Korea] and further discuss this matter soon.”

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said earlier on Wednesday there is evidence that North Korean troops are in Russia but that it remained to be seen what they would be doing there.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry has said that the BRICS summit declaration demonstrated that the organisation had no unified position on the war in Ukraine.

“Moscow’s attempts to impose an idea of an alleged alternative position of the so-called Global South regarding Russian aggression against Ukraine have failed again,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The declaration demonstrated that the BRICS as an association does not have a joint position on Russian aggression against Ukraine,” it added.

BRICS leaders including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called for a ceasefire in Gaza and made positive noises about a non-Western payment system but mentioned Ukraine just once in their final communique.

While the 43-page document called for a ceasefire in Gaza and ranged from geopolitics to the preservation of big cats, it mentioned Ukraine just once.

“We recall national positions concerning the situation in and around Ukraine as expressed in the appropriate fora,” the communique said. “We note with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.