(Kyiv) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged his allies to stop “watching” and take action before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield.
Posted at 7:37 p.m.
Mr Zelensky raised the possibility of a pre-emptive Ukrainian strike on camps where North Korean troops are trained, and said Kyiv knew their locations. But he added that Ukraine could not do so without permission from allies to use long-range, Western-made weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Mr. Zelensky argued, in a message posted Friday evening on the messaging app Telegram, that “instead… America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean army to start attacking the Ukrainians too.”
The Biden administration said Thursday that some 8,000 North Korean troops are currently in Russia’s Kursk region, near the Ukrainian border, and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days.
Western leaders have described the North Korean troop deployment as a significant escalation that could also shake up relations in the Indo-Pacific region and open the door to technology transfers from Moscow to Pyongyang that could advance the threat posed by the nuclear program. North Korea’s nuclear and missile weapons.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with her Russian counterpart in Moscow on Friday.
Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly said they need permission to use Western weapons to strike arms depots, airfields and military bases far from the border to motivate Russia to seek peace. In response, U.S. defense officials argued that missiles were in limited numbers and that Ukraine was already using its own long-range drones to strike targets farther away in Russia.
Moscow has also repeatedly signaled that it would consider such strikes a major escalation. President Vladimir Putin warned on September 12 that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and NATO states if they approved them.
Canada
