U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin meets with South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun during the U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., October 30, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -North Korea's deployment to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine has the potential to lengthen the already 2-1/2-year old conflict and draw in additional actors, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.
Some 10,000 North Korean forces were already deployed to eastern Russia, wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, Austin said, in what he added increasingly looked like a deployment to support Russia's combat operations in the Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine.
