Kremlin dismisses reports North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine

The Kremlin has dismissed reports that North Korea has sent soldiers to Ukraine to support Russian troops in the war.

“This looks like another bit of fake news,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.

That comes after the British newspaper The Guardian reported on Thursday that senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul had said North Korean military engineers had been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles.

The newspaper also said that North Korean troops were fighting in Ukraine and that some had been killed, according to an anonymous source.

According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, the defence chief in Seoul said earlier this month that North Korea was likely to deploy members of its armed forces to support Russia in Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has become one of Putin’s key allies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

Having anticipated a swift victory, Putin has instead seen his forces severely depleted as the Ukrainians fight back with advanced weaponry donated by Western allies.

At the same time, Russia has been hit with harsh sanctions by the West, making it harder to import military hardware and supplies or the components needed to produce them.

The Russian army has deployed Iranian-designed drones and missiles in Ukraine, but reports indicate it has also been relying on North Korean support.

The US claims that more than 16,000 shipping containers containing munitions have been dispatched to Russia from North Korea.

Germany’s chief defence official said the purpose of the shipments is likely to keep Russian domestic stocks up while manufactured weapons are sent for use in Ukraine.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, is suffering from deep economic problems after decades of dictatorship and sanctions, and food security remains a major problem.

Kim personally visited Putin in Russia in September, travelling via train on his first foreign excursion since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The trip saw him inspect Russian rocket parts and a launch site, with Putin saying the isolated totalitarian country is interested in developing its own space programme.

In June, Kim and Putin signed a mutual defence pact which includes a clause obliging the countries to come to each other’s defence if either is attacked.

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In January, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Russia had uses ballistic missiles and launchers supplied by North Korea on the battlefield in Ukraine.

And Ukrainians on the ground say they have found missile parts bearing characters from the Korean alphabet.

Moscow has always denied it uses North Korean weaponry in Ukraine.

On Thursday, Yonhap quoted a spokesperson for the US State Department as saying that reports of North Korean soldiers killed in Ukraine shows Russia’s “profound” desperation to secure outside support for its war effort.

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