Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands during a meeting in Russia's Amur region in September 2023. (Vladimir Smirnov, Sputnik pool photo via AFP/Getty Images/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Nearly three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought no shortage of complicated twists and turns. But one bizarre new element particularly stands out: North Korean troops in the battlefield mix.
South Korean intelligence first raised the alarm last month about their presence inside Russia, and since then, mounting evidence of that claim has been aired at NATO headquarters in Brussels, at the United Nations and in Washington.
For an already beleaguered Ukraine, the development is yet another flashing danger sign. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told South Korean television on Thursday that he expected North Korean troops to take part in combat against Ukrainian forces within “days, not months.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, standing alongside senior South Korean officials at the State Department — and speaking hours after North Korea conducted its longest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile test — made a similar prediction Thursday, saying Russia could use North Korean forces in frontline operations in coming days.
Here is some background on how they came to stand at the doorstep of a fray 5,000 miles from home — and what the ramifications might be for the region and the wider world.
How big a deal is this?
Some analysts have framed it as a watershed moment.
“The arrival of North Korean soldiers on the battlefields of Europe is a historically unprecedented event that represents a major escalation in the largest European invasion since World War II,” wrote Peter Dickinson, editor of the Atlantic Council think tank’s publication UkraineAlert.
Others, however, suggested that a contingent of some 10,000 North Korean forces — the figure cited by Blinken and the Pentagon — would do little to alter broad battlefield dynamics in a war in which estimates of Russian and Ukrainian military casualties already exceed half a million.
Even if not numerically significant, any infusion of manpower can count at a time when both sides are suffering attrition and scrambling to find recruits.
The North Korean troops are thought to include some members of its special forces, and Ukrainian intelligence has said the contingent includes at least three high-ranking generals. North Korea for some time has been providing Russia with artillery and ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, and its forces could help make more effective use of such weaponry.
Some analysts have said the move to seek outside help should be read as a sign of weakness on Moscow’s part.
“It is because Russia is failing to achieve significant results on the battlefield that it resorts to drawing more manpower and drawing more materiel and kit from its allies,” Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine forum at the British think tank Chatham House, told a webinar put on by the organization.
Zelensky, though, framed it as a Russian test of the will of Ukraine’s allies.
“Putin is checking the reaction of the west,” he said in his interview with South Korean television. “And I believe that after all these reactions, Putin will decide and increase the contingent.”
Kremlin officials say NATO’s longstanding aid to Ukraine is really no different than a friendly nation moving to help Russia’s war effort.
But throughout the war, both sides have taken care to avoid turning the conflict into a direct battle between Russia and NATO, whose 32 member nations, including the United States, have a mutual-defense pact.
North Korea turned up the rhetorical heat in a visit to Moscow on Friday by its foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, who met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. She said her government will stand by Russia until it prevails in Ukraine, calling it a “holy war,” and accused South Korea and the United States of planning a nuclear attack on North Korea.
South Korea, meanwhile, has already said it is weighing moving to help Ukraine militarily in response to North Korea’s move.
All this has left Beijing in an awkward position.
China has been supportive of Russia in the course of the Ukraine war — though stopping short of providing it with offensive weaponry — but has reason to be wary of a warming between Moscow and Pyongyang.
“China does not like Russia to have so much influence over the North,” wrote Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “In addition, if the longer-term ramifications of this cooperation lead to greater DPRK capabilities that invite even more U.S. military presence and allied capabilities in China’s region, that does not benefit China.”
North Korea and Russia signed a strategic partnership accord in June, and analysts said there could be quick quid pro quo for the troop deployment.
That could involve food assistance and financial support, said Chatham House Korea analyst Edward Howell, but “what Kim Jong Un wants the most is advanced missile technology.”
“We know North Korea wants to improve its satellite technology capability, conventional weapons capability and missile delivery systems,” he told Friday’s webinar.
South Korea has amplified its own warnings, telling the Pentagon this week that North Korea is “very likely” to seek technology relating to tactical nuclear weapons, reconnaissance satellites and nuclear submarines.
Transitions between U.S. administrations can be a tense time, particularly since the last one. Traditionally, Washington conveys stern but quiet warnings to adversaries against attempting to try to gain any military advantage from a perceived period of uncertainty, stressing that a changeover does not alter U.S. readiness.
If Kamala Harris were to win Tuesday’s vote, there would likely be a greater element of continuity between the Biden administration and her own, if she were to be elevated from the vice presidency. If Donald Trump prevails, or contests the result, it could add a significant element of volatility.
Gen. Mark Milley, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described a sense of necessity for “deconfliction” measures during the final days of the last Trump administration.
In testimony last year, Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee about his phone conversations with a Chinese general in 2021, including one that came days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Milley said the calls with Gen. Li Zuocheng were intended to reassure China that the United States had no intention of staging an attack.
That testimony came after publication of the book “Peril” — by reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — which said that Milley was worried at the time about the potential for erratic behavior by the departing president.
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