Ukraine Reports North Korean Soldiers Now Aiding Russia in the War
However, it appears North Korean troops are deserting Ukraine frontline days after arrival.
In my last report on North Korea, I noted that it destroyed roads and rail lines to South Korea in response to drone-dropped propaganda leaflets.
The rogue nation is also threatening to attack the US and South Korea with nuclear weapons.
Now Ukraine is reporting North Korean soldiers are now aiding Russia in the regional war.
The Ukrainian government says its military intelligence has evidence that North Korea isn’t just sending weapons to assist Russia in the war on Ukraine. Pyongyang may also be sending soldiers.
“This is no longer just about transferring weapons,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address over the weekend. “It’s about actually transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.”
Andriy Kovalenko, who leads the center for countering disinformation on Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council, told NPR that he was briefed on the issue and said Russia is training North Korean military personnel on Russian territory.
“The enemy’s plans are to use [the North Korean presence] to reinforce conscripts and border guards in the border regions of Russia,” he said. “But it’s too early to say whether they will be deployed directly on the territory of Ukraine.”
A Ukrainian military intelligence source has told the BBC that Russia’s army is forming a unit of some 3,000 North Koreans. The numbers and deployment. While the actual number has been hard to substantiate, there has been a trend of warming relations between the two countries.
There is no doubt Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their levels of cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message only last week calling him his “closest comrade”.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea joining the war, and South Korea’s defence minister said this month that the chance of a North Korean deployment in Ukraine was “highly likely”.
The biggest question mark is over the numbers involved.
A military source in Russia’s Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed in one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, to the north of Vladivostok. But the source refused to give a precise number, other than that they were “absolutely nowhere near 3,000”.
Military experts have told us they doubt Russian army units can successfully incorporate North Korean soldiers in their thousands.
Yet, retaining the North Korean soldiers during the deployment may prove challenging.
Some 18 North Korean soldiers are believed to have deserted the Russian frontline, with Kremlin fighters reportedly searching for them.
The troops were deployed in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk oblasts, about four miles from the border with Ukraine, when they deserted, the public broadcasting company of Ukraine, Suspilne, reported.
Intelligence officials cited by the broadcaster said the Russian military is searching for the North Korean soldiers, while commanders are trying to conceal the desertion from their higher-ups.
…North Korean soldiers were set to form a “special Buryat battalion,” named after the Mongolic ethnic group indigenous to the region spanning Siberia as well as northern Mongolia and China, sources quoted by LIGA said.
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Talk about a golden opportunity for defectors.
I wonder if all the NK posturing of late was just to detract from the fact that their already puny army is even smaller now.
Agree. But they better not have any close relatives left in NK.
The NK Army isn’t small. According to Euronews, “North Korea possesses the world’s fourth-largest military, with nearly 1.3 million active personnel representing approximately 5% of the total population. An additional 600,000 are believed to serve as reserve soldiers.”
Joining the army is probably the best way to keep from starving in NK.
quality-wise they stink, but as Stalin might have said, Quantity has a quality of its own
Another really good way to avoid starving in North Korea is leaving North Korea,
True but remember when Iraq had the 5th largest army in the world? How did that work out for them..
Maybe the Norks aren’t sending their best troops to Russia. They are sending the ones they want to get rid of.
They learned from Mexico not to send your best.
Will be quite revealing, especially to South Korea, to assess how the Norks perform under fire.
fjb=lbj
Do NORK soldiers have any field experience? Beating up civilians at home doesn’t count.
They don’t. But, it’s a battlefield full of non-professional soldiers. They’re largely conscripts fighting on both sides. Russia has turned out to be a clownshow of military, unable to provide any semblance of close-air support which hinders their ability to make any sustained advances against a clearly inferior opponent (on paper). As such, they’ve done what did in WWII: Throw bodies at the problem. I suspect the DPRK will be equally ineffective (or worse). But, in a war of attrition, which this has been almost from the beginning, Russia having access to more bodies that won’t get sent home in bags to grieving Russians will be some benefit.
Russia can’t use conscripts outside of Russia, a deal to mollify the population with universal conscription. The Moscow population is largely unaffected with most soldiers coming from far=flung provinces as well.
True. But, that law has clearly been loosely enforced as many Russian conscripts have been captured by Ukraine, particularly over the last year. It’s unclear how many have been wounded or KIA. Also, when Ukraine began their campaign inside Russian territory, they encountered nothing but conscripts, which is likely the primary reason that limited incursion was so successful.
Yeah. No. Russia is winning, through adaptation and reorganizing as well as different training. The Ukrainians can’t stop them and Russian EW is better than NATO’s. Russia can hit targets from the air with nesr impunity now.
Yet so many in the West continue to cling to Cold War stereotypes, with no evidence to back it up.
Not a smart way to go.
‘Non professional Soldiers’….well other than the previously heralded veteran volunteers from NATO …and I suspect AD troops in smaller # from both UK and US Spec OP and 3 letter agency paramilitary operatives. Lets not forget Macron publicly wanted to directly US French and NATO forces so I imagine there are a few French on the ground.
Definitely a meat grinder. The Russians simply don’t have the ability to conduct combined arms operations in power projection offensively. They’ve done well in static defense and gotten better in local operations in counter attacks. They must make the jump to better training of and commit to a real increase in responsibility/authority for NCO Corps as well as Jr Officers. Can’t have to depend on O6 much less a General Officer to lead a Company size element in a critical maneuver. They gonna have to invest more $ in pay, living conditions and ruthlessly enforce professionalism v the usual brutality to achieve ‘discipline’. They have modern ish weaponry but they really haven’t got the unit morale, professional cadre, training nor the logistical train and equipment to support a modern army in the field. They gonna win this war of attrition b/c they are so much larger than Ukraine and have more men to throw away..not b/c they are a true threat v NATO.
They don’t have sergeants so no repository of knowledge.
Yes they do have NCOs but they are no more than bullying enforcers over conscripts for the most part. My argument was the Russians must create, from scratch, a professional NCO Corps or remain largely irrelevant. Certainly any modern western army whose govt has put $ into training, pay/benefits, equipment and ordinance won’t have any issue defeating a Russian offensive force.
Russian doesn’t really have an NCO Corps.
Yes that’s true, which is why I argued they must create a professional NCO Corps. That involves not just more pay/benefits but a total rethinking/shift in philosophy.
To become a modern force they must allow their subordinate leaders, JR Officers and NCO, to use initiative and their own professional judgement built by field training, operational experience and NCO academy to implement orders that support the mission objectives/CDR intent.
Until the.Russians embrace this sort of change and commit to it over at least a decade to gain the first fruits across their forces the Russians will remain a second tier threat if that.
Paraphrasing Kissinger, can’t they all lose? The North Koreans are completely nuts, the Russians are drunk and the Ukrainians are corrupt.
No wonder the Democrats love them so much.
A Trump administration means condos in NK, Putin with his tail between his legs and Zelensky spending 20 years to life in the SuperMax for money laundering.
A Harris administration means mushroom clouds.
Ukrainian corruption is a legacy of the Soviet days and not nearly as bad as it is in Russia. Also Ukraine is one of the few former Soviet states that is actually going after corrupt officials.
The Russian meat grinder offense strategy has found a way to buy meat overseas instead of using up the domestic supply.
North Korea often rents out its people as cheap labor to countries like China and Russia, renting out its soldiers is just one more step in this.
Thats pathetic. If true it means russian army is broken.
>>Ukraine Reports North Korean Soldiers Now Aiding Russia in the War<<
Which of course means the United States will have to give that fraud, Zelenskyy, another $150 Billion or so of U.S. taxpayer dollars to prop up his regime until the Russian military walk over him and his country.
Rather use the money to support those in desperate need here in the United States but there you go and here we are.
Forget sending money, send whatever we have in storage and mothballs. We literally scrap more tanks and APC’s than we sent to Ukraine.
As the war mutates, it is becoming a world war. While laser focused on one region, the players have other options to play.
This sounds much more like scare mongering by Zelinsky to keep the US Money Train rolling into his country. He has zero evidence any Nork troops are doing anything other than training and zero evidence they are going to be used to fight in his country. The US regularly trains troops from different countries here and we send our troops around the world to hold training exercises. If Russia is becoming an ally of North Korea it makes sense for them to train together.
Not sure why this is a problem given the number of foreign nationals fighting on the Ukrainian side?
Might be an optimum time for South Korea to force unification with the north.
Still waiting for Ukraine to end hostilities by declaring its territory to be a “Gun-Free Zone”…
There is a fact that many people do not know, an unknown number of Chinese veterans have already gone to Russia to fight as mercenaries.
There are many videos/posts about this on Chinese social media. Some have died, some have been injured.
https://x.com/jenniferzeng97/status/1847284985931182105