By LORNE COOK and TARA COPP

BRUSSELS (AP) — North Korea is sending about 10,000 troops to Russia for training and fighting in Ukraine “over the next few weeks,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Monday.

Some of these soldiers are already approaching Ukraine, Singh said.

“We are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region,” he told reporters.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has already publicly warned that if North Korean troops are used on the battlefield, they will be viewed as combatants and legitimate targets, and their use would also have serious consequences for security in the Indo-Pacific, Singh said.

Austin will meet with his South Korean counterparts at the Pentagon later this week, where the use of North Korean troops in Ukraine is expected to be discussed. Singh said there would be no restrictions on the use of US-supplied weapons in these forces.

“If we see North Korean troops advancing to the front lines, they are common warriors in the war,” Singh said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. “This is a calculation that North Korea must make.”

Earlier Monday, NATO said some North Korean troops were deployed in the Kursk border region where Russia is located. Ukraine struggles to repel attack.

“Today, I can confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia and North Korean military units have been deployed in the Kursk region,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters.

Rutte said the move represented a “significant escalation” in North Korea’s involvement in the conflict and marked a “dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”

The addition of thousands of North Korean troops to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will put further pressure on Ukraine’s tired and overstretched military. Western officials say it will also increase geopolitical tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the broader Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is eager to reshape global power dynamics. He tried to establish a balance against Western influence. BRICS countries summitLeaders of China and India, among them, were in Russia last week. According to Western governments, it sought direct aid from Iran, which provided drones for the war, and from North Korea, which shipped large amounts of munitions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shrugged off Rutte’s comments and said Pyongyang and Moscow signed a joint security agreement last June. He stopped short of confirming that North Korean soldiers were in Russia.

Lavrov claimed that Western military instructors had already been secretly sent to Ukraine to help use long-range weapons supplied by Western partners.

“Western military personnel have been working in Ukraine for a long time,” Lavrov said after his meeting with the Kuwaiti foreign minister in Moscow.

Ukraine, whose defense in the eastern Donetsk region is under serious Russian pressure, may receive bleaker news from next week’s US presidential elections. Could be Donald Trump’s victory We are seeing significant U.S. military aid decline.

In Moscow, the Ministry of Defense announced on Monday that Russian troops captured the village of Tsukuryne in Donetsk. slow-moving Russian offensive.

Rutte spoke in Brussels after a high-level South Korean delegation, including senior intelligence and military officials as well as senior diplomats, briefed the alliance’s 32 national ambassadors at NATO headquarters.

Rutte said NATO was “actively consulting with Ukraine and our Indo-Pacific partners within the alliance” on developments. He said he would soon meet with the South Korean president and the Ukrainian defense minister.