The tone rose at the United Nations on Wednesday October 30, with the deputy American ambassador to the UN warning North Korea of the fate that awaited its soldiers if they entered Ukraine to support Russia. These troops “will inevitably leave in body bags”, warned Robert Wood before the UN Security Council. “So I would advise Chairman Kim to think twice before engaging in such reckless and dangerous behavior,” he added.
Earlier in the day, US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin held a conference with his South Korean counterpart Kim Yong-hyun during which they called on North Korea to “withdraw its troops from Russia”. According to Washington and Seoul, some 10,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia, without their mission being clearly identified. But the Pentagon said on Tuesday that it had detected a “small number” of North Korean soldiers in the Russian region of Kursk, which borders Ukraine.
For the South Korean Minister of Defense, the North Korean deployment could “result in an escalation of threats to the security of the Korean peninsula.” The United States “will continue to work with its allies and partners to discourage Russia from using these troops in combat”, added Lloyd Austin, while stressing that there was a “strong chance” that this would be already the case. The American minister further noted that North Korean soldiers were being distributed “Russian uniforms and equipment”, an accusation supported by kyiv.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, reaffirmed kyiv’s accusations about the presence of 12,000 North Korean soldiers in Russia, adding that they should “start directly participating in combat operations against Ukraine in November.
“Disinformation”, according to Russia
“These are simple assertions, which, in the absence of convincing evidence, are only there to distract attention from really important problems that threaten international peace and security,” assured Vassili Nebenzia, Russian ambassador on Wednesday. at the UN, accusing Washington in particular of reaching a new peak in terms of “disinformation”.
“Even if everything our Western colleagues say about cooperation between Russia and North Korea was true, how come the United States and its allies are trying to impose fallible logic that they have the right to help the Zelensky regime, to mobilize NATO defense and intelligence, while Russia’s allies do not have the right to do the same,” he said.
If North Korean troops are actually deployed in Russia, “this would constitute a further escalation in North Korean support for the war of aggression led by Russia against Ukraine,” said the French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Rivière. The UN, for its part, indicated that it could not confirm these accusations through the voice of Miroslav Jenca, UN Under-Secretary General for Europe.
In this context of high tensions, North Korea fired a ballistic missile this Thursday towards the Sea of Japan, its first show of force since it was accused of having sent thousands of soldiers to Russia. Pyongyang confirmed a “crucial” test, part of its desire to “strengthen its nuclear forces, supervised by its leader Kim Jong-un. This new North Korean shot was “strongly” condemned by the White House which denounced a “blatant violation” of UN Security Council resolutions Under sanctions taken at the UN, Pyongyang is in fact prohibited from carrying out any weapons tests using ballistic technology.