The Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Tuesday confirmed that its troops had for the first time engaged with North Korean units recently deployed to help Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the development, after Pyongyang deployed troops to the theater, opened up "a new page in instability in the world."

What we know about the engagement

In an interview with South Korean television, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed that there had been a "small engagement" with North Korean troops.

Another Kyiv official said troops had fired artillery at North Korean soldiers in the Russian border region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian military has been staging a three-month-old incursion on Moscow's territory.

The head of the counter-disinformation branch of Ukraine's Security Council, Andrii Kovalenko, said: "The first North Korean troops have already been shelled, in the Kursk region." He did not elaborate.

Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, thanked allies around the world who, he said, had reacted to the dispatch of North Korean troops to Russia last month "not just with words ... but who are preparing actions to support our defense."

"The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world," he said.

The president said that Ukraine and the international community had to "do everything so that this Russian step to expand the war with real escalation fails."

Ukrainian, South Korean and US sources all report that North Korea has transferred at least 10,000 soldiers to Russia, with some reports mentioning numbers up to 12,000.

G7 and others fear 'dangerous expansion'

Ahead of the news on Tuesday, foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) democracies and three key allies voiced about the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia and the possibility they may be used in the war against Ukraine.

"The DPRK's [North Korea's] direct support for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, besides showing Russia's desperate efforts to compensate its losses, would mark a dangerous expansion of the conflict," the ministers said in a statement.

G7 members the United States, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany, France and Canada, signed the message, alongside  South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The countries condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the increasing military cooperation between the DPRK and Russia, as well as the export of North Korean ballistic missiles and munitions to Russia.

Their statement added that North Korean "soldiers receiving or providing any training or other assistance related to the use of ballistic missiles or arms" was also a violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

rc/wmr (dpa,Reuters)