The North Korean unit is expected to arrive in Ukraine as soon as next month, raising fears that Pyongyang is becoming an active combatant in the war.
North Korea is to send military units to Ukraine in support of Russia’s war, as fears grow of a critical escalation in the conflict.
Last week, Putin made an official state visit to North Korea, the first time in 24 years that he had travelled to the country.
The Russian leader and his host Kim Jong Un signed a defence pact on June 19 in Pyongyang, promising military assistance to one another.
Within days of signing the agreement, North Korea has announced it will be sending a unit of military engineers to join Russia’s army on the ground in the Donetsk region.
The North Korean unit is expected to arrive in Ukraine as soon as next month, raising fears that Pyongyang is becoming an active combatant in the war.
The country is already supplying Russia with ammunition and missiles and is reported to have shipped as many as 1.6 million artillery shells to Putin’s army.
A spokesman for the Pentagon said North Korean troops would be sent to their slaughter and questioned the wisdom of the deployment.
Pat Ryder told journalists at a briefing: “I think that if I were North Korean military personnel management, I would be questioning my choices on sending my forces to be cannon fodder in an illegal war against Ukraine.”
He added the United States would continue to monitor the ever-deepening military ties between the two countries.
The military alliance between Putin and Kim states: “In case any one of the two sides is put in a state of war by an armed invasion from an individual state or several states, the other side shall provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay.”
Vladimir Putin and his close circle brazenly dismissed the fresh arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Russia’s former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov were slapped on June 25 with arrest warrants for alleged international crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the war in Ukraine.
The court said the powerful pair is allegedly responsible for the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
The Russian Security Council, the state agency supporting the Russian president’s decision-making on national security affairs and matters of strategic interest, was quick to react to the warrants.
The decision, the council said according to Russian state news agency TASS, was “part of the hybrid war of the West against the Russian Federation”.
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