North Korea sends foreign minister to Russia as its troops train to fight in Ukraine

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Tuesday its top diplomat is visiting Russia, in another sign of their deepening relations as rival South Korea and Western nations say the North has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said a delegation led by Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui departed for Russia on Monday, but didn’t specify the purpose of the visit.

The announcement of Choe’s visit came hours after the Pentagon said North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia, who are expected to arrive in battlefields in Ukraine within “the next several weeks.”

South Korean and Western leaders have expressed concern that North Korean involvement could help prolong Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and that Russia may offer technology in return that could advance the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday that some of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in telephone calls with European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Monday shared South Korean intelligence assessments that North Korean troops could be deployed to battlefronts “more quickly than anticipated.” He called for closer coordination with European governments aimed at “monitoring and blocking “illegal exchanges between Pyongyang and Moscow, Yoon’s office said in a statement.

After initially denying the claims about North Korean troop deployments, Pyongyang and Moscow have adopted a vaguer stance, asserting that their military cooperation conforms with international law without directly admitting the presence of North Korean forces in Russia.

North Korea has also been accused of providing millions of artillery shells and other military equipment to Russia to fuel its war in Ukraine. The United States and its partners have described Russia's procurement of North Korean personnel and supplies as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and raised suspicions that Moscow is helping Pyongyang to evade sanctions and unlawfully finance its weapons program.

“The illegal military collusion between Russia and North Korea poses a significant security threat to the international community and a serious matter that could potentially harm our security. We must thoroughly examine all possibilities and prepare countermeasures,” Yoon said in a Cabinet meeting in Seoul on Tuesday.

Yoon last week raised the possibility of supplying Ukraine with weapons while saying Seoul is preparing countermeasures that could be rolled out in stages depending on the degree of military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter, has provided humanitarian aid and other non-lethal support to Ukraine and joined U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. It has so far resisted calls by Kyiv and NATO to directly supply Ukraine with weapons, citing a longstanding policy of not providing arms to countries engaged in active conflict.