Vladimir Putin has sidestepped claims that North Korea has sent soldiers to Russia, insisting that it was up to Moscow how to run its mutual defence clause with Pyongyang.

Speaking at the close of the Brics summit in Kazan on Thursday, he accused the west of escalating the Ukraine war and said it was “living an illusion” if it thought it could inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

The US said it had seen evidence that North Korea had sent 3,000 troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that could mark a fundamental challenge to Ukraine due to its manpower shortages.

Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery apparently showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something.”

He repeated his claims that the west had escalated the Ukraine crisis and said Nato officers and instructors were directly involved in the Ukraine war.

“We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work,” Putin said.

The US and South Korea have said that North Korean troops have reached Ukraine and, although Putin may be being deliberately ambiguous to lower Ukraine morale, it is also striking he did not deny the allegations given a high-profile opportunity to do so.

No fellow Brics leader raised the issue in public during the summit, which instead heard vague calls for restraint.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s military intelligence service said that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, the Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

“On October 23, 2024, their presence was recorded in the Kursk region,” the Ukrainian intelligence agency said in a statement.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, used his speech to call for a “just peace”.

Guterres was in Russia for the first time since April 2022 and was due to hold private talks on Ukraine with Putin later in the day. Moscow is seeking to use the forum to build a united front of emerging economies that use alternatives to the dollar with which to trade.

In a brief passage on Ukraine, the UN chief said: “We need peace in Ukraine, a just peace in line with the UN charter, international law and the [UN] general assembly resolution.”

He said: “We must uphold the values of the UN charter, the rule of law and the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states.” He made no reference to the North Korean troops.

It is the first time Guterres has met Putin since the international criminal court in March 2023 issued a warrant for the arrest of the Russian leader because of children in Ukraine being abducted and taken to Russia. The Ukrainian foreign ministry has criticised Guterres over the meeting, especially since he rejected an invitation to attend a Ukrainian-sponsored peace summit this summer.

Guterres urged members of Brics not to see the organisation as an alternative to the UN, saying: “No single group and no single country can act alone or in isolation. It takes a community of nations, working as one global family, to address global challenges.”

Putin stated that the emergence of a “more just world order” was being hampered by “forces accustomed to thinking and acting in the logic of domination over everything and everyone”. He said Kyiv’s foreign backers did not any longer even hide their goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on his country.

Putin said: “Only those who don’t know the history of Russia can believe in this, because they don’t take into account the unity and the strength of spirit of Russians forged over the centuries.”

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