At BRICS, Putin Appears to Say That North Korean Troops Are in Russia

‘If there are images they are a reflection of something,’ he said in a tongue-in-cheek answer to whether Pyongyang had sent troops to help with Russia’s war in Ukraine.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appeared to acknowledge on Thursday that North Korean troops had been deployed to Russia, commenting for the first time on the assessment of Western officials that the reclusive Asian country had joined Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.

“Images — that is something serious, if there are images they are a reflection of something,” he said, responding to a question about satellite images appearing to show North Korean troops in Russia.

His tongue-in-cheek response, at a conference of emerging-market economies that Russia is hosting, did not explicitly confirm or deny statements made Wednesday by the Pentagon, which said that North Korea had sent troops to Russia.

He was speaking hours after Russia’s lower house of Parliament ratified a mutual defense treaty with North Korea that Mr. Putin had signed with Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, when Mr. Putin visited Pyongyang in June.

It was a rubber-stamp vote, but Mr. Putin used it to reaffirm Moscow’s ties to North Korea and send a signal that he was drawing in allies who would bolster his standoff with the West.

“Today, we ratified our treaty on strategic partnership which contains article four,” Mr. Putin continued. He was referring to a clause stipulating that should either nation be “put in a state of war by an armed invasion,” the other will “provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay.”

“We have never doubted the fact that the North Korean leadership is very serious about their commitments to that, but it is up to us to decide what to do about implementing it,” he said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III called the presence of North Korean troops in Russia “very, very serious,” though he said that what the soldiers were doing in Russia was “left to be seen.” He said there was no conclusive evidence that the North Korean troops were moving toward Ukraine.

Kyiv has said that up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers may be mobilized to fight alongside Russian soldiers. South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that there are 3,000 North Korean soldiers on Russian soil at the moment, and their numbers were expected to swell to 10,000 by December. In a statement Thursday, Ukraine’s intelligence agency said the first North Korean troops had arrived in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Kyiv staged an incursion in August. The claims could not be independently verified.

In remarks earlier on Thursday, Mr. Putin claimed Russia could not be defeated on the battlefield.

“Our adversaries make no secret of their goal to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Mr. Putin said before the assembled leaders. “I will say directly: These are illusionary calculations, made by those who do not know Russia’s history.”

The Russian president was speaking in Kazan on the final day of a summit, named BRICS after its members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Mr. Putin has sought to build the conference into a global counterweight to a wealthy West.

In his comments, Mr. Putin called the summit a success for a group committed to building a “more democratic, inclusive and multipolar world order.”

The event has been a relative public relations coup for Mr. Putin, whom the West has sought to isolate since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was attended by dozens of world leaders, including more than 20 heads of state. Mr. Putin said leaders of 30 countries, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — a NATO member — had expressed interest in joining the bloc.

The war in Ukraine has loomed over the three-day meeting, even though most of the leaders present did not emphasize it in their remarks and there was no progress toward a plan for peace. It barely figured in the official communiqué agreed to by all member states, which was more focused on the escalating crisis in the Middle East, condemning Western sanctions, and on calls to reform the global financial system.

But the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres — on his first trip to Russia since April 2022, when the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was under siege — called for a “just peace" as he addressed a plenary session of BRICS members and aspirants, ahead of a one-on-one with Mr. Putin.

“We need peace in Ukraine — a just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law, and the General Assembly resolution,” Mr. Guterres said. Such a peace, he said, should be based on “the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states.”

His visit was condemned by Kyiv and by Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny.

“It was the third year of the war, and the UN Secretary-General was shaking hands with a murderer,” Ms. Navalnaya wrote on X, above a photo of Mr. Putin greeting Mr. Guterres.

In his comments on the possible deployment of North Korean troops, Mr. Putin shrugged off the prospect that it would constitute an escalation, saying the real escalation was U.S. meddling in Ukraine since 2013. He accused NATO soldiers, without providing evidence, of direct participation in the Ukraine war, saying that fighting alongside Ukrainian troops were “not mercenaries, but military personnel.”

Mr. Putin also spoke about his relationship with the United States, saying that he was open to seeing how it developed following the U.S. presidential election next month.

“If the United States is open to building normal relations with Russia, then we will do the same,” he said. “If they are open, then we will also be open. And if they don’t want it, that’s just fine.”

He said he believed the Republican candidate, former President Donald J. Trump, was “sincere” in “his desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine.” He did not mention Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.