The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, about 8,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia’s western front-line Kursk region. In a press conference yesterday, Blinken said, the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine. He further said that while these troops have not yet been engaged in combat against Ukrainian forces, he anticipates their involvement in the coming days. The announcement was the clearest statement yet from the US that it anticipated the first large-scale deployment of foreign troops into the Russia-Ukraine war since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.