Seoul (South Korea), Apr 28 (LaPresse/AP) – North Korea has confirmed for the first time that it has sent troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine. US, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence officials said that North Korea sent some 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last autumn. But North Korea had not confirmed its troop movements until Monday. The North Korean state news agency Korean Central News Agency said that leader Kim Jong Un had decided to send combat troops to Russia under a mutual defence treaty. Kim reportedly stated that the deployment of the troops was aimed at ‘annihilating and wiping out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberating the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces’.