U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Washington will sternly respond to North Korea’s deployment of troops to the war in Ukraine.  

Ahead of attending a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels on Wednesday, Blinken said North Korean troops have been sent to the battlefield and currently are “quite literally” in combat, adding that such a move calls for a stern response. 

Blinken’s remarks come a day after the State Department’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said that more than ten-thousand North Korean soldiers “have been sent to eastern Russia, and most of them have moved to the far western Kursk Oblast, where they have begun engaging in combat operations with Russian forces.”

Patel also said that Russian forces have trained the North Korean soldiers “in artillery, in UAV and basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, which are critical skills for front-line operations."