Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder claimed yesterday that the first North Korean soldiers have been killed fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region. “What I can tell you is that we do assess that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces. We do have indications that they have suffered casualties, both killed and wounded,” he responded to a reporter, but without providing further details. “And as we’ve said all along, those forces are legitimate military targets for the Ukrainians given that they are engaged in active combat ops.”
At the State Department, spokesman Matthew Miller spoke similarly. “They entered a war, and they are, as such, combatants and are legitimate targets for the Ukrainian military,” he said during yesterday’s press briefing. “And if they were to cross the border into Ukraine, that would be … also an escalation by the Government of North Korea,” he insisted.
The Treasury Department also announced, yesterday, new sanctions aimed at Pyongyang’s financial and military support to Moscow, as well as its ballistic missile program.
