By Oluwaseyi Adeniran
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North Korea, which has reportedly dispatched ground troops to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, has also sent fighter pilots who could fly Russian warplanes, a report said on Monday.A government official in South Korea claimed that North Korea last month dispatched fighter pilots to Vladivostok, a city in the Russian Far East, ahead of the first deployment of its ground troops on October 8, South Korean media TV Chosun reported.
This could relate to training on Russian combat aircraft supplied to North Korea, the report said. But it could not rule out that Russia, which has suffered from a shortage of pilots during the Russia-Ukraine War, had requested assistance from the North.
Russia would be the first overseas deployment for the North’s combat pilots since the Vietnam War. They also operated in Syria and Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Newsweek has reached out to the North Korean embassy in China for comment by email.
Both Ukraine and South Korea have accused North Korea, ruled by Kim Jong Un, of sending troops to support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort. The Kremlin claimed that cooperation with the North “is not directed against third countries.” On Monday, a North Korean representative to the United Nations refuted the accusations from Kyiv and Seoul for the first time, claiming their allegations were “groundless stereotyped rumors” and that Pyongyang enjoys a legitimate and cooperative relationship with Moscow
Seoul is mulling sending intelligence personnel to Ukraine to monitor any North Korean troops fighting with the Russians, Yonhap News Agency in South Korea reported on Tuesday. It is also considering supplying weapons to Kyiv.
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