Ukraine-Russia war live: North Korean troops ‘already in Ukraine’ as Kyiv drafts 160,000 more into frontline

The Pentagon has said that North Korea dispatched 10,000 troops to Russia, with some of them believed to be heading to the Kursk border to join Vladimir Putin’s forces in their invasion of Ukraine amid the biggest conflict Europe has seen since the Second World War.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said some North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region. The Russian forces are facing difficulty in pushing back Ukraine’s cross-border incursion launched on 6 August.

This came within hours of Nato secretary general Mark Rutte confirming recent Ukrainian intelligence reports of the presence of North Korean military units deployed to Kursk near the Ukrainian border.

The notorious Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has promised to take revenge for a drone attack that caused a fire at a military training academy in his south Russian region.

Ukraine has frequently struck Russia with drones in the course of the war, but Tuesday’s attack appeared to be the first against Chechnya.

Kadyrov told reporters in a video published by the Russian state news agency RIA: “They’ve bitten us - we will destroy them. In the very near future we’ll show them the kind of vengeance they’ve never even dreamt of.”

Earlier, Kadyrov posted on Telegram that the drone strike had set fire to the roof of what he said was an empty building at the “special forces university” in the city of Gudermes. There were no casualties, he said.

Two western intelligence officials have said a number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, reported CNN.

“It seems that a good many of them are already in action,” the official said, without elaborating on a number of North Korean forces fighting in Ukraine war.

The officials said they are expecting the number of North Korean soldiers inside Ukraine to grow as they complete training in eastern Russia and await deployment on the war frontline.

The US confirmed yesterday that some North Korean soldiers were in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August and hold hundreds of square kilometres of territory.

A couple of thousand more were heading there, the Pentagon said.

Russia held a training exercise on Tuesday to simulate a “massive nuclear strike” in response to a first strike by an enemy, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said.

President Vladimir Putin kicked off the exercise at a critical point in the Ukraine war. The drill, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said was a regular, planned event, involved the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles.

As part of the exercise, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia to the Kura test range in Kamchatka in the far east, the defence ministry said.

Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles were fired from submarines in the Barents and Okhotsk Seas. Tu-95MS strategic bomber planes, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, launched cruise missiles.

All the missiles reached their targets, the defence ministry said.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said the deployment of North Korean troops in the Ukraine conflict will likely escalate the war waged by Russia.

His remarks were made on a phone call with South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol’s office yesterday.

The war will leave a greater impact on the security environment of Europe and the Indo-Pacific, Trudeau said, proposing closer cooperation between the two countries on the developing situation, according to Mr Yoon’s office.

“Prime minister Trudeau said that the possibility of the Ukraine war becoming more fierce has increased with the North Korean troops’ deployment to Russia, and this will have an impact on the overall security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific,” the office said.

Mr Yoon said the pace of North Korean troop deployment in the Ukraine conflict had been faster than expected, creating a dangerous situation, his office said.

Vladimir Putin has not denied the involvement of North Korean troops in the war but said it was Russia’s business how it implements a partnership treaty he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed in June.

Several explosions shook Kyiv early today and a fire broke out as a result of a Russian drone attack, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said.

“Emergency services are dispatched to the site,” mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Reuters witnesses heard a series of explosions in what sounded like air defence units in operation.

Further details have been released about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s agreement with South Korea’s president to step up contacts between their nations at all levels to develop countermeasures and a strategy to respond to North Korea’s involvement in the war in Ukraine.

In a phone call with President Yoon Suk Yeol, Zelensky said the two leaders also agreed to strengthen exchanges of intelligence and expertise.

Zelensky said he shared data about the deployment of 3,000 North Korean troops to Russian training grounds near the combat zone, with their presence expected to increase to approximately 12,000.

“We agreed to strengthen intelligence and expertise exchange, intensify contacts at all levels, especially the highest, in order to develop an action strategy and countermeasures to address this escalation, and to engage our mutual partners in cooperation,” he said.

The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Tuesday he had discussed the country’s victory plan and North Korean involvement in the war with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

“Military assistance to Ukraine, sanctions against Russia, and increasing pressure on Moscow’s allies are essential,” he added on X, commenting on his work trip to the U.S.

The US will not enforce any new limits on Ukraine’s use of American weapons if North Korea joins Russia’s war, the Pentagon has said.

On being asked if the US will have limits on what American weapons can be used if it’s a bunch of North Korean soldiers, Pentagon press secretary said: “No... If North Korea – if we see DPRK troops moving in and towards the front lines, I mean, they are co-belligerents in the war. And so, they are fighting on these front lines and the Ukrainians are defending their sovereign territory and pushing the Russians back,” she said.

“...But they would — if they are in combat, you know, they’re fighting the Ukrainians, who are fighting for their sovereign territory. And we’ve made a commitment to Ukraine that we’re going to continue to support them with whatever it takes,” she said.

Ms Singh added that North Korea is sending their soldiers in into a war where Russian casualties and losses are “upwards of 500,000 at this point”.

“That is a calculation that, you know, DPRK leadership is making to send their soldiers into combat,” she said.