Military chiefs believe that the fighting in Ukraine could break into a multinational war as North Korea sends troops to Russia for training.
A wider conflict had been thought inconceivable but Pyongyang’s dispatch of up to four brigades, amounting to 12,000 troops, marks a worrying trend, according to one senior western government source.
The deployment highlights the emergence of a power block opposing the West, one “willing to trade lives and money to forge an axis of aggression that risks the very foundations of the international rules-based system”, the source said, referring to a “deadly quartet” of Iran, North Korea, Russia and China.
