Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's comments were Washington’s first confirmation of a major development over which South Korea and Ukraine have recently sounded the alarm.

North Korea has sent troops to Russia, the United States said Wednesday, its first public confirmation of a move that has rattled Western allies and could mark a major escalation of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

“There is evidence of DPRK troops in Russia,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Rome, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Austin said, adding, “We’re trying to gain better fidelity on it.” It’s a “serious issue,” he said, if North Korea’s “intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf.”

His comments came after South Korea and Ukraine sounded the alarm in recent days, sharing intelligence and voicing dissatisfaction with what they see as a lack of urgency in the response from the U.S. and other Western countries.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    318·
    23 days ago

    Is this something for which there’s actual evidence, or is it another Iraq WMD situation, where we’re kind of just expected to take all of the assertions as gospel?

    It’s not as if they won’t lie to us in order to manufacture buy-in from the public in order to send US troops.

    • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      23 days ago

      And has anyone considered that it’s not North Koreans fighting in Ukraine, but extraterrestrials disguised as North Koreans?

        • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          23 days ago

          Or it could be absolutely nothing, as has occurred in US war-making, quite recently too. It’s historical precedent in US foreign policy to just lie about things occurring in order to drum up support for war. Both Bush’s did it. Remember the Nayirah testimony?

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
        33·
        23 days ago

        Are you familiar with US history, and the number of times its people have been lied to in order to support war? Just off the top of my head: Gulf of Tonkin, the WMD’s, the Iran coup, the USS Maine, and I definitely remember the time when we treated Saddam Hussein the same way we’re treating Zelensky now back in 1983.

        So I’m asking again, has anyone provided actual evidence, publicly, that this has even occurred, or am I just supposed to take these assertions as fact?

        • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          23 days ago

          Asking for confirmation is perfectly fine.

          Suggesting this is like Iraq WMDs and that the US is so desperate to escalate things in Ukraine that they would fake a North Korean invasion of a European country… despite recently going out of their way to ban all partners from allowing Ukraine to even use long range weapons in Russia out of fear of escalation… is where i begin to question your thought process.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            23 days ago

            My thought process is pretty simple.

            When we get to a point where we can view conflicts where the US has purposefully inserted themselves with a few years of hindsight or more, more often than not, we find out the public were deliberately misled about the reasons for US involvement.

            It would be one thing if it were a once-in-a-century aberration, but it’s certainly not. Our history is replete with lies about our involvement in war, so whenever I hear these bold claims from our government, it’s from a perspective of sobriety and skepticism rather than war fever.

            I’d like to see some tangible proof.