Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is continuing to play the North Korea gambit—which was the reported justification for expanding the Ukrainian use of ATACMS missiles in the first place. Austin said this morning in Fiji that the U.S. expects thousands of North Korean troops massing in Russia will “soon” enter combat against Ukraine. About 10,000 North Korean soldiers were believed to be based in the Russian border region of Kursk, he claimed, where they were being “integrated into the Russian formations,” reported Britain’s The Guardian.
“Based upon what they’ve been trained on, the way they’ve been integrated into the Russian formations, I fully expect to see them engaged in combat soon,” Austin said. He had “not seen significant reporting” of North Korean troops being “actively engaged in combat” to date, he added.
