Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark told Newsmax on Monday that the infusion of 10,000 North Korean troops into the Ukraine-Russia war is a "big escalation" geopolitically but not enough to "move the needle" tactically.
That is, unless they're deployed to the Kursk region of Russia, where they could have a "decided impact" against Ukrainian soldiers, he said.
Clark joined "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" on the same day that NATO announced that North Korean soldiers have indeed been deployed to Kursk, the Russian border region that Ukraine seized over the summer.
"Well, first of all, geopolitically speaking, it's a big escalation. It brings North Korea into the conflict in a more direct way. And so this is a concern to all of the nations, to NATO, to South Korea, to Japan, even China would be concerned about this. So that's the big picture," Clark told Van Susteren.
"On the tactical side, 10,000 troops, it's not enough to move the needle overall because you've got hundreds of thousands of troops deployed," he added, but with a caveat.
"But if those troops are deployed against the Ukrainian forces inside the Kursk salient, where you've got 25-30,000 Ukrainian forces spread out in this area, and those North Korean troops punch in there in a concentrated way, they're going to take casualties, certainly, but they could have a decided impact," Clark said.
"And there's nothing that says that it'll only be 10,000. Could be many more than that as this flow gets started."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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