Ukrainian troops have for the first time clashed with North Korean servicemen since Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to Russia.
“The first North Korean troops have already been shelled, in the Kursk region,” said Andrii Kovalenko, a member of Ukraine’s security council on Tuesday.
In an interview with South Korean television, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov also confirmed that there had been a "small engagement" with North Korean troops.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the first battle between North Korean and Ukrainian troops “open a new page of instability in the world.” In his nightly video address on Wednesday, Zelenskiy thanked all allied who he said reacted to the stationing of Pyongyang troops to Russia in October "not just with words ... but who are preparing actions to support our defense." He urged for more measures “so that this Russian step to expand the war with real escalation fails." North Korea has transferred 10,000 soldiers to Russia, according to South Korean and Ukrainian reports.
The news of the clash between Pyongyang servicemen and Ukrainian fighters came as foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) democracies voiced condemned North Korean troops’ involvement in the war. "The DPRK's direct support for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, besides showing Russia's desperate efforts to compensate its losses, would mark a dangerous expansion of the conflict," the ministers said in a statement. Besides G7 members the US, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany, France and Canada, the statement was also signed by South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
