Western embarrassment over North Korean engagement

The official condemnation of Ukraine's allies took three weeks to come. Friday, November 8, the North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body within NATO, “firmly condemned” the engagement of North Korean soldiers alongside Russia, now proven in the Russian region of Kursk, partly occupied by Ukraine since this summer.

“The deployment of thousands of fighters [de Corée du Nord] constitutes a dangerous intensification of the already substantial support provided by this country to the war of aggression that Russia is waging, completely illegally, against Ukraine.denounced the Atlantic Alliance. A press release signed exceptionally by its partners in Asia and Oceania, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, as well as by Ukraine.

A collective condemnation which comes two days after the publication of an unusually dramatic column by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday by the news site Politico. “The presence of North Korean troops in Europe marks a turning point […] Are we on the verge of something far darker than the devastation that has already been inflicted on the Ukrainian people? »asked the new representative of the Atlantic Alliance, who took office on 1^is october.

Trapped by the American electoral context

Despite the unprecedented escalation represented by the deployment of North Korean soldiers, no retaliatory measures have been taken publicly, at this stage, by the allies. To the point that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was annoyed by it on several occasions. “The reaction today is nothing, zero”he declared in particular on October 31, during an interview with the South Korean television channel KBS.

“We are trapped by the American electoral context. If this had happened in the spring, we would undoubtedly have reacted differently”regrets a Western diplomatic source who believes that this new threshold would be able to relaunch the debate on the use of Western long-range weapons to hit targets on Russian territory. “We have not yet sufficiently explored the full dimension” of what is happening, adds the same interlocutor.

Beyond the American political context, one of the reasons put forward to justify this Western hesitation is the difficulty of the allies in corroborating their information on the presence of these North Korean soldiers. First revealed by South Korean intelligence on October 19, the gradual transfer, to the Russian region of Kursk, of these 12,000 soldiers affiliated with the Kim Jong-un regime, has not been confirmed by the United States. as October 23. “The South Koreans taught the Americans things”confirms a source close to the matter. “Efforts to conceal the origins of troops make assessments difficult,” we are also moving towards the headquarters of the Alliance, in Brussels.

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