South Korean diplomacy visits Ottawa amid escalation in Ukraine | War in Ukraine

This concern should be on the agenda of discussions between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, Cho Tae-yul, and the Minister of National Defense, Kim Yong-hyun, with their Canadian counterparts, Mélanie Joly and Bill Blair.

Officially, they are visiting the federal capital to deepen the close cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Korea and work together as strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific and the North Pacific.

The day before, Mélanie Joly welcomed the signing by 70 countries of the Montreal Commitment (new window) for the repatriation of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia, during the Ministerial Conference on the Human Dimension of Ukraine’s Peace Formula.

Ukraine hits Russia deep

According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who called on his allies to react strongly to denounce this new stage in the conflict which has raged for more than two and a half years, North Korean troops could become directly involved in the conflict as early as this Sunday.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated kyiv’s request to obtain the green light from the West (new window) to strike targets deep within Russian territory with long-range missiles, in response to the deployment of North Korean soldiers.

Washington and Seoul have called on North Korea to withdraw its troops, which are mainly present in the Russian region of Kursk, part of whose territory has been under Ukrainian control since the surprise incursion (new window) last August.

Although the mission of the North Korean soldiers is not clearly established, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, affirmed that 8,000 of them would have been deployed in the Kursk oblast (new window)citing its intelligence services.

We haven’t seen these troops yet [nord-coréennes] deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we expect this to happen in the coming days added Mr. Blinken, who believes that they will be used in frontline operations. They would have been equipped with Russian uniforms and trained in artillery, drones and basic infantry operations, including trench clearing.

The Russian ambassador toUnited NationsHIM accused the Americans of disinformation and claimed that the United States had no evidence to support its accusations. However, he questioned, in the conditional tense, how this would be different from the mobilization of the West to support Ukraine.

Until now, Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict has been limited to sending shells, missiles and munitions to Russia. According to South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, Pyongyang has supplied more than 1,000 missiles to Moscow.

Seoul plans to deploy troops to Ukraine

The South Korean government plans to send personnel to Ukraine to monitor North Korean troops, according to South Korean media, cited by theInstitut for the Study of War in his report of 1^is november. Seoul is considering deploying intelligence units to Ukraine to monitor the tactics and combat capabilities of North Korean forces and to interrogate captured North Koreans, the report noted.

Seoul could break from its policy that prevents it from supplying weapons to ongoing conflicts by providing equipment to Ukraine.

A similar summit meeting took place in Moscow on Friday, where North Korea’s minister promised to stand by Russia until “its victory” in Ukraine (new window). It comes a week after the ratification of a mutual defense agreement.

In exchange, North Korea is suspected of having requested technologies to strengthen its nuclear arsenal, in particular ballistic missiles. It also carried out an intimidation operation with the firing of its ballistic missile (new window) intercontinental [ICBM] the most powerful to date, according to Japan. It would have a range of at least 5,500 km, enough to reach the American continent.

With information from Valérie Gamache and Agence France-Presse