North Korean troops are 'in Russia, preparing to fight'

Reports suggest 12,000 could be sent to join war in Ukraine

- RACHEL HAGAN

South Korea's spy agency has warned that North Korea has sent a battalion of troops to bolster Russian president Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a statement that Russian navy ships had transferred 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the Russian port city of Vladivostok earlier this month.

It said they are currently staying at military bases in Vladivostok and other locations in Russia including Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk, and that they will probably be deployed to battlegrounds after completing their adaptation training.

The NIS posted on its website satellite and other photos showing what it called Russian navy ship movements near a North Korean port, along with suspected North Korean mass gatherings in Ussuriysk and Khabarovsk, in the past week. It said more North Korean troops are expected to be sent to Russia soon.

The NIS also said it had been working with the Ukrainian intelligence service, and that it had used facial recognition artificial intelligence technology to identify North Korean officers in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region supporting Russian forces firing North Korean missiles.

North Korea has shipped more than 13,000 containers filled with artillery rounds, ballistic missiles and anti-tank rockets to Russia since August last year, the agency said, based on the remnants of weapons recovered from the front line in Ukraine. In all, more than 8 million artillery and rocket rounds have been shipped to Russia, it said.

"The direct military cooperation between Russia and North Korea that has been reported by foreign media has now been officially confirmed," the spy agency said in a statement.