NATO has now confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in Russia.
While rumoured to have been there for some months, there is growing evidence that up to 10,000 soldiers, accompanied by senior staff – including three generals, have travelled from North Korea to the Russian-held part of Kursk and will soon see combat operations.
Here’s what you should know about these troops’ presence in the conflict zone and why North Korea is joining Russia’s war.
Inexperienced troops with a lot to learn
While not denying the hardiness and toughness of an individual North Korean soldier, there is no one in the North Korean armed forces who has had any experience of fighting a mechanised conflict using 21st-century weapons.
Drones, sensors, and constant surveillance of the battlefield will mix with the old and proven tactics of combined arms warfare, trench clearing and the use of long-range precision artillery.
This will be vital for North Korea if it aims to successfully wage war against South Korea.
It has been very clear to Kim Jong Un, as he watches the war in Ukraine rage on, just what happens to troops who are ill-prepared or lack experience.
The new units arrived in Russia without any equipment, so they will have to learn how to use the Russian models. This is not so much of a problem here as both countries use Soviet-legacy weaponry.
What will prove to be a challenge is the lack of Korean speakers in the Russian army and Russian speakers in the North Korean army, making command and control an issue.
Also, fighting a modern war, where drones constantly survey the battlefield, can quickly result in mass casualties for any units caught in the open.
Urban combat through ruined towns and cities requires high levels of training and coordination – not easy in a contested environment where casualties are usually high.
There is a lot to be gained by North Korea, assuming some survive the conflict.
North Korean gains
The seclusive communist state has had several poor harvests in a row and food is in scarce supply. It is also short of money to be used on the black market as bypassing international sanctions is expensive.
Russia can help with all of this and is reported to be paying up to $2,000 per soldier. The two countries have had deepening military ties and recently signed a defence pact.
North Korea has been providing Russia with large quantities of 122mm and 152mm artillery ammunition, as well as mortar rounds and rockets for Russia’s multiple rocket artillery systems.
North Korean missiles have been used against Ukraine. The quality of all this military equipment has been low, with captured ammunition stocks sometimes failing four times out of five.
Russia can provide technical advisers to improve industrial quality and output. Russia’s need for ammunition is almost bottomless and both Russia and Ukraine have realised that a continuous supply is vital if they are to continue the war.
Russia can provide assistance in the North’s fledgeling space programme, helping to update its satellites and the rockets that deliver them.
North Korea also gains something invaluable that it does not have: combat experience in a modern war.
But what does Russia get out of the deployment?
Russia’s gains
Russia has expended a vast amount in countering Ukraine’s offensive into Kursk and the push into Donetsk. It has succeeded in containing Ukraine in southern Russia and is inching forward in Donetsk, with Pokrovsk struggling to hold off sustained Russian assaults on the Ukrainian city.
All this has come at great cost.
An estimated 80,000 soldiers have been killed or wounded in these operations. That is roughly 1,200 casualties per day, unsustainable losses even for Russia.
An injection of troops could be just what Russia needs, as its depleted forces are near exhaustion after an offensive that has lasted months.
How will the Russians use these new troops?
Quite possibly in frontal, human-wave attacks as they have done in the past with their own units.
Soldiers who lack combat experience are better suited in defensive positions, freeing up more experienced troops, well-trained marines and paratroopers, to go on offensive operations to take back Russian territory held by Ukraine.
It is to this end that Russia has been massing infantry, artillery, and tanks in Kursk, with a new counteroffensive about to take place.
How will this affect the conduct of the war?
The effects will be near and far.
There are two questions here: firstly, how will a successful Russian operation in Kursk affect the war; and secondly, what effect will North Korea’s part in it have?
Ukraine, in a lightning move, attacked and invaded Russia in the summer, catching the defenders by surprise and swiftly capturing lightly held Russian towns and villages.
Russia grudgingly moved forces from Donetsk, bolstering them with units from the Pacific fleets and elsewhere in Russia, to finally slow and stop Ukraine’s advance.
Now those units are in place and ready.
If Russia is successful in driving back Ukrainian forces to the border, Ukraine will lose an important bargaining chip in the eventual peace negotiations.
It will also free up tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to fight in Donetsk, the focal point of the whole war, giving Russia a much higher chance of taking the entire oblast, or province.
North Korea recently ratified the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Russia, signed in June.
The treaty is now in effect and includes a mutual assistance clause if either party is attacked. Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory falls into this definition.
What is Ukraine worried about?
Ukraine’s concern, and NATO’s, is that the first few thousand North Korean troops in Kursk will be the first of many more to follow.
If Russia escalates by allowing large numbers of foreign troops into the conflict, what will stop NATO countries from volunteering units of their own to fight on behalf of Ukraine?
While small numbers of foreign volunteers already fight on both sides, NATO-sanctioned troops joining the conflict would be a very different matter, placing NATO and Russian forces in direct contact with each other.
This would dramatically increase the scope of the conflict, with the attendant risk of formally dragging NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Russian-led alliance of post-Soviet countries, into the war.
Russia has chosen to bring North Korean soldiers into the fight, so far a few thousand but the possibility of large numbers of foreign soldiers joining Russian forces is but a step away.
The dangers of miscalculation and runaway escalation are now very real, despite a new United States administration led by President-elect Donald Trump promising in some way to stop the conflict – assuming Russia will listen.
