SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
North Korea UN representative denies Pyongyang sent troops to Russia
United Nations, United States, Oct 22 (AFP) Oct 22, 2024
North Korea has not sent troops to Russia to help Moscow fight Ukraine, one of its United Nations representatives said Monday, dismissing Seoul's claims as "groundless rumor".

Seoul's spy agency said Friday that Pyongyang sent a "large-scale" troop deployment to help its ally, claiming that 1,500 special forces were already training in Russia's Far East and ready to head soon for the frontlines of the Ukraine war.

"As for the so-called military cooperation with Russia, my delegation does not feel any need for comment on such groundless stereotyped rumors," a North Korean representative said at a committee meeting during the UN General Assembly.

Seoul's claims were "aimed at smearing the image of the DPRK and undermining the legitimate, friendly and cooperative relations between two sovereign states," the representative told the meeting, held late Monday in New York.

Pyongyang and Moscow have been allies since North Korea's founding after World War II, and have drawn even closer since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Seoul and Washington long claiming that Kim Jong Un has been sending weapons for use in Ukraine.

North Korean state media have not commented on the purported troop deployment.

Russia has also not confirmed the troop deployment, but defended its military cooperation with the North.

After Seoul summoned Moscow's ambassador in South Korea to complain, the envoy "stressed that cooperation between Russia and North Korea... is not directed against the interests of South Korea's security."

Neither NATO nor the United States have confirmed the deployment, but both have cast it as a potentially dangerous escalation in the long-running Ukraine conflict.

"We have seen reports the DPRK has sent forces and is preparing to send additional soldiers to Ukraine to fight alongside Russia," Robert Wood, US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council.

"If true, this marks a dangerous and highly concerning development and an obvious deepening of the DPRK-Russia military relationship," Wood said.

The United States and its allies have already voiced concern about North Korea providing weapons to Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

On Tuesday, the Yonhap agency reported that the South Korean government is considering sending a team of personnel to Ukraine to monitor North Korean troops being deployed, citing a government source.

According to the source, if deployed the team will likely consist of military personnel from intelligence divisions to analyse North Korean battlefield strategies and participate in interrogating any captured prisoners of war.

Yonhap also reported that a pro-Russia Telegram account posted a photo showing the Russian and North Korean flags side by side on a Ukrainian battlefield.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
Mars glaciers are purer and more uniform than previously thought
Curiosity Rovers Boxwork Campaign Reaches New Heights on Mount Sharp
Skyfall Mars helicopter fleet to scout future astronaut landing sites

24/7 Energy News Coverage
MicroCarb satellite launches to map global carbon dioxide emissions from space
Chemistry breakthroughs open new frontiers in industrial carbon capture
Rollable solar array by GalaxySpace redefines satellite compactness and power efficiency

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
BlackSky to supply satellite imagery and analytics for Latin American security operations
GovSat selects Thales Alenia Space to build secure satellite for military communications
SES and Luxembourg to expand military satcom with next generation GovSat2

24/7 News Coverage
One billion years of protein evolution reveals surprising design flexibility
MetOp Second Generation satellite fully fuelled ahead of August launch
We tracked illegal fishing in marine protected areas - satellites and AI show most bans are respected, and could help enforce future ones



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.