There is no doubt that Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. After all, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message just last week calling his “closest ally”.
In this context, until now it was taken for granted that North Korea was supplying ammunition and missiles to help Russia continue its war in Ukraine. But in recent weeks, recent reports have suggested he is also sending large numbers of troops – reports echoed this week by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who said relations between Moscow and Pyongyang are entering a new and more troubling phase.
Why does Russia need North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine?
The rumored transfer of large numbers of North Korean troops comes amid reports that Putin is trying to mobilize more Russians to fight, amid growing concern at home about the length and cost of the war, both financially and in human terms. losses. For example, last week, the “New York Times” reported that September was the “bloodiest” month for Russian troops, with 115,000 Russians dead since the beginning of the war and 500,000 wounded.
So this week, the Kyiv Post cited Ukrainian military sources as saying that up to 3,000 North Korean soldiers were being supplied with small arms and ammunition to take part in “high-risk operations aimed at reducing pressure on Russian forces.”
These would be in addition to the dozens of North Korean technicians reportedly already sent to Ukraine to help develop exported weapons, including KN-23 ballistic missiles. Indeed, as the Guardian reported last week, some North Korean personnel offering technical advice to their Russian counterparts are believed to have been among those killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-held territory earlier this month.
What will North Korea get in return?
In return for this military support, the Kim regime stands to benefit economically and militarily, although at the same time, closer ties with Russia deepen its isolation from the wider international community.
North Korea, which is subject to decades of UN-led sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, is constantly looking for new sources of foreign currency. The country’s already fragile economy was hit hard by the closure of its border with China – its largest trading partner – during the pandemic and has yet to recover.
At the same time, North Korea’s military generals could learn valuable lessons from the war as the country escalates tensions with South Korea, while the conflict in Ukraine gives the regime an opportunity to gauge how well – or poorly – they are performing. ammunition and its missiles in a real war.
What does this mean for the Russian-Ukrainian war?
For now, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of direct North Korean involvement on the front as false.
However, a Russian military source confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and are stationed at one of the military bases north of Vladivostok. But the source declined to give an exact number, other than that it was “not very close to 3,000”.
Even if there were so many, it is not a large number in terms of the battlefield, but it is something that worries the USA as well as Ukraine, since it would be indicative of the increasingly close cooperation between Putin and Kim.
Nevertheless, this particular event, if confirmed, would also signal something else: the normalization of the idea of ”foreign boots” on the Ukrainian front – so far no Western “boots” have stepped on Ukraine for fear of escalation.
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