After Seoul and Washington, it is Tokyo's turn to warn about the impact of North Korea on the conflict in Ukraine. “ This will not only worsen the situation in Ukraine, but will also have extremely significant implications for the security situation in East Asia “, declared Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya this Saturday, November 16 in kyiv, regarding a possible entry of North Korean troops into Ukraine.
On the occasion of his official visit, the Japanese minister reaffirmed his country's support for kyiv: “Our position remains unchanged, namely that Japan will stand with Ukraine”he stressed, while his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Sybiga considered that their two nations were “very close in terms of values”.
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South Korean intelligence said in October that North Korean soldiers had been sent to eastern Russia. The Americans subsequently declared that they had “concrete evidence” of the presence of these North Korean troops in Russian military bases. This November 12, the spokesperson for the American State Department even assured these soldiers had started « to engage in combat operations with Russian forces” in the Kursk region, where the Ukrainian army has been carrying out a counter-offensive since August. According to kyiv, these North Korean forces bring together 11,000 men.
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Faced with these accusations, North Korea has categorically denied any military involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. In a statement to the United Nations, a representative of Pyongyang described these assertions as “baseless rumors”. Moscow, for its part, also rejected these allegations, while playing on irony. Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, invited the press to “ ask Pyongyang directly » to find out where their troops were.