The US says North Korean troops are in Russia and may fight in Ukraine

US officials are say now that North Korean troops may be fighting for the Russians in Ukraine.

“There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Rome, using North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. “What exactly are they doing? Remains to be seen. These are things we need to sort out.”

Austin called the situation “very, very serious” and said it would impact U.S. interests in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

The Ukrainian government said last week that this was the case receive Intelligence reports indicate that at least 10,000 troops have been prepared for deployment to Russia's front lines in Ukraine. Meanwhile, as of today, South Korea's national spy agency said 3,000 North Korean special forces had already arrived in Russia, and more are on the way.

The South Korean and Ukrainian allegations sparked a wave of concern across the West. Russia and North Korea have denied the claims, but Austin's comments add further credence to previous reports: A third actor is likely to enter the Ukraine war. How will the West react?

“This is a challenge, but we know how to respond to this challenge. “It is important that our partners do not hide from this challenge,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his video address to Ukrainian citizens last night, in which he appeared to call for a strong American response.

The concerns of U.S. allies more directly involved in these proceedings, such as South Korea and Ukraine, are very real and deserve to be heard. But as Mark Episkopos, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute's Eurasia Program, says, they also need to be considered in light of those states' broader interests and the ways in which they differ from ours.

“The Zelensky government has made it a foreign policy priority to drag the West into direct conflict with Russia, recognizing that this is the only way Ukraine can win, and now it is up to us in the West to decide whether or not . “It is in our interest not to get into a direct war with Russia,” Episkopos said.

Before Austin's comments this week, the story had spread in a similar way to other rumors about Russian rogue actions over the past three years: several large ones Western media Western officials wrote headlines already accepting as absolute fact the reports of North Korean troops fighting for Russia expressed alarmist and threatening rhetoric and Zelensky pushed for an “appropriate and fair response” from NATO and the USA

Now that U.S. officials are lending credence to these stories, the trend of closer friendship between Russia and North Korea is becoming even clearer this year. In JuneThe two signed a treaty that contained commitments to mutual security. There are credible reports that North Korea has done this delivery Russia has had various weapons systems for months. As this relationship has evolved, so have the West's concerns.

In a New York Times Article On Wednesday, North Korea expert and former member of President George W. Bush's National Security Council, Victor Cha, warned that the North Korea-Russia connection is now a “true 'borderless partnership'” and that “we are in a very different situation “Era in which North Korean soldiers are dying for Putin.”

While this rhetoric can stoke alarmism, the larger problem lies not in the premise of North Korean engagement itself, but in the way American foreign policy makers may be inclined to respond to it.

In terms of overall U.S. and NATO security, experts say the external threat posed by North Korean battalions, Iranian bombs or Chinese intelligence Russia's support for the Eastern European excursion pales in comparison to the self-initiated threat to prolong the war and get into a spiral of escalation with Russia and its allies.

“We should be careful not to overreact to this alleged development in a way that would put the West in a very serious military quagmire,” Episkopos said. “If we were to use this as an opportunity to intervene, it would have catastrophic consequences for both Ukraine and the West.”

While Russia, Iran, China and North Korea are indeed helping each other, it is also true that there is an alliance of over 30 countries give Experts emphasize that support for Ukraine since the start of the war has been “unprecedented.” commentators And columnists To imagine the beginning of a new anti-Western axis as a metaphysical battle of ideological supremacy – democracy versus authoritarianism, good versus evil – misses the simple reality that Russia is a rational state that can and will form alliances around its interests to protect, and to do so fairly, as the United States and its allies have done.

“The United States rightly speaks about the strength of its alliances and that NATO is the largest and, by many measures, most successful military alliance in the world,” Episkopos said. “But then we are kind of shocked and horrified when we realize that our adversaries also have allies and their allies are helping them in a variety of ways, directly and indirectly. But that is the reality of this war and has been since 2022.”

Episkopos called for a rational mindset among U.S. policymakers and rejected an overemphasis on liberal internationalism that misrepresents Putin's goals.

“I fear that we have returned to a similar understanding of our adversaries,” he continued, “that they are not complex, diverse governments with a whole range of interests, but simply evil, malign actors trying to… Liberals to destroy democracy – and our only choice is to stand against it to the end. Such a framework should be rejected.”