DEEP DIVE — North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to Russia – presumably for use in the war against Ukraine – has stunned policymakers and experts around the world. Even those who were already sounding the alarm over the North’s military aid to Moscow.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in Rome for a NATO defense ministers meeting, confirmed the bombshell Wednesday. “There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” Austin said, using the acronym for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He called the deployment “very, very serious.”