BRUSSELS (AP) — North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and likely fight Ukraine in “the coming weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday, in a move that Western leaders say will be useful. intensify the nearly three-year war And disrupt relations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Some North Korean troops have already moved closer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, and would likely head toward the Kursk border region, where Russia has a presence. struggling to repel a Ukrainian incursion.

Earlier on Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed recent Ukrainian intelligence reports that some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.

The addition of thousands of North Korean troops to Europe’s largest conflict since World War II will increase pressure on Ukraine’s tired and overstretched military. It would also inflame geopolitical tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the broader Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, Western officials say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to reshape global power dynamics. He sought to build a counterweight to Western influence with a BRICS summitincluding Chinese and Indian leaders, in Russia last week. He has requested direct war aid from Iran, which has supplied drones, and North Korea, which has shipped large quantities of munitions, according to Western governments.

Rutte told reporters in Brussels that the North Korean deployment represents “a significant escalation” in Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict and “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”

US President Joe Biden also called the deployment “dangerous”. Very dangerous.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with their South Korean counterparts later this week in Washington.

Singh said Austin and Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun would discuss the deployment of North Korean soldiers to Ukraine. There will be no limitation on the use of US-supplied weapons against these forces, Singh said.

“If we see the DPRK troops heading to the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. “That’s a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ignored Rutte’s comments and noted that Pyongyang and Moscow signed a common security pact last June. He did not confirm the presence of North Korean soldiers in Russia.

Lavrov claimed that Western military instructors had long been secretly deployed in Ukraine to help his army use long-range weapons supplied by Western partners.

Ukraine, whose defenses are under heavy Russian pressure in the eastern Donetsk region, could receive grimmer news from next week’s U.S. presidential election. A victory for Donald Trump could see key U.S. military aid decline.

In Moscow, the Defense Ministry announced on Monday that Russian troops had captured the village of Tsukuryne in Donetsk – the last settlement to succumb. the slow Russian attack.

Rutte spoke in Brussels after a high-level South Korean delegation, comprising senior military and intelligence officials as well as senior diplomats, briefed the alliance’s 32 national ambassadors at NATO headquarters.

Rutte said NATO is “actively consulting within the alliance, with Ukraine and with our Indo-Pacific partners” on developments. He said he was expected to meet with the South Korean president and Ukraine’s defense minister soon.

“We continue to monitor the situation closely,” he said. He did not respond to questions after the statement.

The South Koreans showed no evidence of the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk, according to European officials present during the 90-minute exchange who spoke to The Associated Press about the security briefing under the guise of ‘anonymity.

It is unclear how or when NATO allies might respond to North Korean involvement. They could, for example, lift restrictions that prevent Ukraine from using Western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes on Russian soil.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, citing intelligence reports, said last Friday that North Korean troops would be deployed. on the battlefield in a few days.

He previously said his government had information that some 10,000 North Korean troops were prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country.

Days before Zelensky spoke, U.S. and South Korean officials said there was evidence that North Korea had sent troops to Russia.

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Copp reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this report.