CNN –
North Korea is sending its citizens to help the Russian military fight Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky said, raising concerns about the alliance between Moscow and the secretive state.
“We see a growing alliance between Russia and regimes like North Korea,” the Ukrainian president said in his daily video message on Sunday. It is no longer just a matter of transporting weapons. It’s actually about transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.
Zelensky’s claim comes amid an increasingly friendly relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea in June – the first such visit in more than two decades – and Western observers wondered how much North Korea helped Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is clear that in such circumstances our relations with our partners need to be developed. Zelensky added that the front line needs more support, reiterating his appeal to Western countries to allow Kiev to use long-range missiles on Russian territory.
A Ukrainian intelligence source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, told CNN last week that a small number of North Koreans are working with the Russian military, mostly to help with engineering and share information about nuclear weapons. Use of North Korean ammunition. The source said that some of them were recently killed in eastern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday denied allegations that North Korean personnel were sent to help Russia, calling them “another hoax.”
But South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said last week that it was monitoring developments and believed the claim may be accurate.
Defense Minister Kim Jong-hyun said it was “very likely that the reported casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine are true, under different circumstances,” while speaking at the annual parliamentary review of the defense sector on Tuesday.
He added: “We believe that the possibility of deploying more regular forces is very high, as Russia and North Korea have entered into a mutual agreement that is almost equivalent to a military alliance. “We will also be well prepared for this eventuality,” he added.
Several governments accused Pyongyang of supplying Moscow with weapons for its brutal war in Ukraine, which the two countries denied, despite significant evidence of such transfers.
The two countries, both pariahs in the West, have forged increasingly warm relations since the Russian invasion.
During Putin’s visit to the North Korean capital in June, the two countries pledged to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if the other side was attacked, part of a historic defense agreement agreed to by the two authoritarian countries.
During that trip, Putin said that the two countries were working to strengthen relations to a “new level.”
In statements before the talks between the two leaders, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his “full support and solidarity with the struggles of the Russian government, its army and its people,” specifically referring to Moscow’s war in Ukraine “to protect its sovereignty.” Regional security and stability.”
