'Small number' of North Korean troops spotted near Russia-Ukraine border: Pentagon

The U.S. has assessed a “small number” of North Korean troops are present in Russia's Kursk border region, with fears they could soon join the fight in Ukraine, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said Tuesday.

Press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday there are “indications that there's already a small number” of North Koreans in the region, “with a couple thousand more that are either almost there, or due to arrive imminently.”

Washington a day earlier said Pyongyang had sent about 10,000 soldiers to train in eastern Russia, a far higher figure than its estimate of 3,000 last week. 

And NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also on Monday confirmed some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops in August launched a ground offensive.

Ryder on Tuesday said the U.S. is “concerned that Russia intends to use these [North Korean] soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainians” in the next few weeks.

But in a step beyond what the U.S. and NATO has confirmed, two Western intelligence officials told CNN a small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine.

“It seems that a good many of them are already in action,” one official said Tuesday.

U.S. and South Korean officials are set to meet in Washington, D.C., beginning Wednesday to discuss North Korea’s “expanding relationship with Russia,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Monday.

South Korean officials earlier this week were at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where they briefed allies on the North Korean deployments. After the meetings, Rutte said the growing Russia-North Korea alliance was “a threat to both the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.”

Top Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak also was in Washington on Tuesday for meetings with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In a post to the social platform X, Yermak said he and Sullivan discussed the “North Korean soldiers whom Russia is preparing for war.”