North Korean soldiers have begun fighting against Ukraine alongside their Russian allies, the US State Department said, after Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to Russia’s Kursk region to aid the Kremlin’s war efforts.

“Today I can confirm that over 10,000 DPRK 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,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said in a briefing Tuesday, using the initials of the North’s official name. 

It’s the first time the US confirmed that North Korean troops are directly engaged in the conflict after Ukrainian officials earlier said their forces had faced North Korean troops in battle. South Korea’s defense ministry did not immediately confirm the engagement. 

Russia has trained North Korean soldiers in artillery, drone and other skills necessary for front line operations but it remains to be seen how well the two forces will be integrated as they fight alongside each other, Patel said. 

“Some of the challenges they would need to overcome are interoperability, the language barrier, command and control, and communications,” he said. 

Russia has been pushing harder to dislodge Ukrainian forces in Kursk, areas of which Kyiv’s forces captured in a surprise incursion in August, as concerns grow in Kyiv over the future of US support after Donald Trump’s election victory. 

Trump had said on the campaign trail that if elected he would broker a swift end to the war, raising fears in Kyiv that Ukraine might be driven into a settlement that would freeze the conflict in its current state, giving the Kremlin time to re-arm and renew its assault.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday preliminary planning was underway to arrange a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the president-elect. It was not immediately clear if a meeting was being planned for before or after Trump’s inauguration in January. 

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