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Some 12,000 North Korean troops will be sent to Russia, a key United States ally said Thursday, vowing it “will not stand by and do nothing” in the face of this significant “provocation.”

The new estimate, shared with NBC News by South Korea’s defense ministry, comes after the United States joined Seoul and Kyiv in confirming the development and said any troops deployed against Ukraine will be “fair game.”

Pyongyang is expected to augment Russia’s military with its own sizable contingent of special forces, military engineers, and artillery troops, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun reported to lawmakers Thursday, his office told NBC News. The total number is expected to reach 12,000, he said, with 3,000 deployed already.

That matches Washington’s assessment.

“They’re fair game” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday, saying that the U.S. believes at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers have already arrived in eastern Russia by sea. The soldiers moved earlier this month and are receiving training at multiple Russian military bases, Kirby said.

“They're fair targets and the Ukrainian military will defend themselves against North Korean soldiers the same way they’re defending themselves against Russian soldiers,” he said. “There could be dead and wounded North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine.”

What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Austin told reporters in Rome.

But U.S. allies were in little doubt.

North Korean soldiers were being disguised as Russians and were acting under the Kremlin’s command instead of their own, the South Korean defense minister told lawmakers Thursday, which he said suggested “Kim Jong Un is selling North Korean soldiers as cannon fodder mercenaries.”

Still, integrating the two militaries will not be easy and will likely be complicated by their different languages, experts say, though the prospect of North Korea’s inexperienced military bringing back critical battleground experience has worried officials in Seoul.

“North Korea’s dispatch of the troops to Russia is a provocation that is threatening the security of the Korean peninsula,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday. “South Korea will not stand by and do nothing,” Yoon’s office said in a statement.

For more than two years, South Korea has only provided non-lethal assistance to Ukraine, but Yoon on Wednesday said Seoul would now consider providing Kyiv with both defensive and offensive weapons.

Meanwhile, China, which borders both Russia and North Korea and has developed increasingly close ties with both amid its rivalry with the West, has called for a peaceful settlement of the war.

Late hubby told me , at length what he discovered when for one of his rabbit hole experiences on the net..about comparing , German , US , and English and Russian equipment . telling me about how extremely advanced .
The Leopards were compared to speed and target control aquisition and rate of fire .Was extremely advanced.
And very superior to all the others. The info is out there .. Just got to find the right rabbit hole.

There are reports of Russia being so hard up for equipment that soldiers are having to go to battle in four wheelers built in China and on motorcycles.

President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range weapons inside Russia for limited strikes, according to two U.S. officials.

Longtime restrictions are being eased as North Korea has deployed thousands of troops to the Kursk region of Russia to support Russian troops fighting Ukrainian forces.

The new authority applies to Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which Ukrainian officials have sought from the Biden administration. U.S. officials had resisted, citing concerns over limited stockpile, the repositioning of Russian assets outside of ATACMS range and the fact that Ukraine has been using other assets with success, primarily drones, making ATACMS less critical to the fight.

But Biden officials have condemned the North Korean deployment as a possible expansion of the war. The ATACMS could be used in and around Kursk.

The Defense Department and the White House both declined to comment.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that he is “encouraged” by the decision but that it “does not excuse the administration’s deliberate slow-walking of items and assistance long authorized by Congress for use against Putin’s illegal aggression.”

contamination
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, also applauded the decision in a statement but called it “overdue.”

“Ukraine can’t properly defend itself if one hand is tied behind its back,” he said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and President-elect Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., both criticized the decision, implying it could lead to World War III.

“On his way out of office, Joe Biden is dangerously trying to start WWIII by authorizing Ukraine the use of U.S. long range missiles into Russia,” Greene said on X. “The American people gave a mandate on Nov 5th against these exact America last decisions and do NOT want to fund or fight foreign wars.”

In May, Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to use American weapons to strike Russia just over the border. At the time, Ukraine was prohibited from using longer-range weapons to strike deeper into the country, sources told NBC News.

Russia unleashed its largest air strike on Ukraine in almost three months on Sunday, launching 120 missiles and 90 drones that killed at least seven people and caused severe damage to the power system, officials said.

Ukrainians had been bracing for weeks for a renewed Russian attack on an already hobbled energy system, fearing long winter blackouts and mounting psychological pressure almost 1,000 days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Air defenses could be heard engaging drones over the capital Kyiv in the night, and a series of powerful blasts boomed across the city center during the missile attack. Residents huddled in underground metro stations, wrapped in winter coats.

Severe damage to Ukraine’s energy system, including to DTEK power stations. These attacks again highlight Ukraine’s need for additional air defense systems from our allies,” said Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power company.

The extent of the damage was hard to assess. After repeated Russian attacks on the power grid, officials reveal little detailed information about the outcome of strikes and the state of the network.

Officials confirmed damage to “critical infrastructure” or power cuts in regions from Volyn, Rivne, Lviv in the west to Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.

DTEK imposed emergency power cuts in the southern Odesa region but had lifted them in three other regions by late morning. Emergency work was ongoing in the Odesa, Rivne and Volyn regions, national grid operator Ukrenergo said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had launched a massive strike on energy facilities that supply Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.

“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure across Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine nervous about Western diplomacy
Kyiv’s air force said it had destroyed 104 of the incoming 120 missiles and shot down 42 drones. Another 41 disappeared from radar, it said.

At least seven people were killed, in the regions of Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk, authorities said.

Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Popsoi said Russian missiles and drones had violated Moldovan airspace during the attack. NATO member Poland, which also borders Ukraine, said it had scrambled its air force as a precaution.

Its latest onslaught piles more pressure on Ukraine as Moscow’s troops notch up their fastest battlefield gains in the east since 2022 in their effort to seize the entire industrial Donbas region.

Ukrainian troops are meanwhile trying to hold an area of land that they seized in Russia’s Kursk region in August, something Kyiv has said could one day be a bargaining chip.

Sybiha said the strike appeared to be Moscow’s “true response” to leaders contacting President Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who called the Russian leader on Friday for the first time in two years.

Though Scholz urged Putin to pull out his troops, which occupy a fifth of Ukraine, Kyiv bridled at a call that it said reduced Putin’s isolation.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk echoed Sybiha: “The attack last night, one of the biggest in this war, has proved that telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole West for Ukraine. The next weeks will be decisive, not only for the war itself, but also for our future.”