The Pentagon believes North Korean Troops fighting in Russia’s Armed Forces are a “fair target” for Ukrainian strikes.
“Where they are positioned they are absolutely fair target, and we absolutely expect them to be engaged in the fight,” Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday.
On Monday, the Pentagon said that an estimated 11,000 North Korean soldiers had embedded with Russian forces in the Kursk region.
While Singh could not confirm that they had engaged in combat operations, she said that these troops would nevertheless be regarded as co-belligerents in the conflict with Ukraine.
“By bringing in another foreign country into the battlefield, by bringing in over 11,000 DPRK soldiers into the fight, that is an escalatory action,” Singh said.
“We’ve said very clearly that the introduction of DPRK soldiers into the fight, especially when it comes to Ukraine’s sovereignty, means they are a fair game in that fight. And so, they would be considered lawful military targets,” she added.
Pentagon Deputy Spokesperson Sabrina Singh holds a press briefing at the Pentagon on January 26, 2023 in Arlington, Virginia. On Thursday, Singh said that North Koreans fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk were a “fair target” for Ukrainian attacks.
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Singh declined to comment on media reports which claimed that a North Korean general was wounded in a recent attack on Russia’s Kursk region, part of a series of strikes carried out by Kyiv using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.
The U.K. cabinet office previously declined to confirm whether the use of the long-range missiles for strikes on Russian military targets had been authorized by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but directed Newsweek to statements by him outlining that such strikes would fall under Ukraine’s “clear right of self-defense against Russia’s illegal attacks.”
The use of Storm Shadow missiles also followed a decision by the U.S. to permit Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, for strikes on Russian territory.
First reported on Sunday, the decision was confirmed on Tuesday by Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.
“The weapons that President Biden has authorized Ukraine to use will give it greater ability to defend itself and hopefully allow the Russian Federation to understand that the use of force to seize Ukrainian territory will not be successful and perhaps it will begin to negotiate peace or, better yet, simply withdraw from Ukrainian territory,” Nichols told Brazilian outlet The Globe.
However, the move has been criticized by the Kremlin as an escalation, with former president Dmitry Medvedev saying that this had given Russia the right to “launch a retaliatory strike with weapons of mass destruction against Kyiv and the main NATO facilities.”
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of “pushing the whole world into a global conflict,” and said that the country was now “entitled” to use its latest Oreshnik missile system “against military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities.”
In response to a question regarding the escalation of the conflict on Thursday, Singh said: “What’s been escalatory in this war is the fact that Russia decided to turn to a foreign country and bring those DPRK soldiers into the fight.”
“We don’t seek war with Russia. That’s not our intention,” she added, “but we absolutely are going to going to support Ukraine, and that’s been something that the president has been very clear about since day one.”
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