What Does North Korean Troop Deployment to Russia Mean for the War?

Vladimir Putin with Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kim Jong-un. Photo courtesy of the Kremlin.

North Korea has deployed thousands of its special forces troops to Russia. What does that mean for the war in Ukraine and the world at large? At Foreign Policy, Keith Johnson discusses the ramifications of the deployment, writing:

Russia loses something like 1,000 troops a day in Ukraine. What good are 10,000 fresh troops? And when was the last time North Korean troops were even in combat?

It’s true that Russia has had high casualty rates from its war in Ukraine, with some of its bloodiest days occurring this month. But the North Korean troops, unlike Russian conscripts and convicts, might not just be cannon fodder.

South Korean intelligence flagged the deployed units as special forces, apparently part of North Korea’s XI Corps, a 200,000-person, 18-brigade strong spearhead of the North Korean army that is actually well-fed, well-trained, uber-indoctrinated, and especially gifted at infiltration operations. They might have trouble with modern warfare and the Russian language, but if North Korea’s mass army has quality units, these are it.

“These units pose a significant threat in both offensive and defensive operations,” said a South Korean defense analyst who requested anonymity to discuss North Korean capabilities.

But they will have Russian weapons, Russian logistics, and Russian support, and they will be fighting alongside Russians. How could this injection shore up a war that half a million Russians haven’t been able to?

Location, location, location. Indications are that the Russians could use North Korean reinforcements to finish off the Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory around Kursk, with possible front-line deployment as early as November.

Their potential use in Kursk is important in two respects. First, politically, it fits neatly inside the terms of the June mutual defense agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang, in which either side can help the other repel armed aggression on their territory. Second, in a historical rhyme, this year of the war has seen Kursk take on outsized importance. To the extent Russia can tip the balance around Kursk with fresh, relatively high-quality troops, it can redeploy its own forces to reinforce success further south, where it is close to cracking Ukrainian defenses in Donetsk, potentially opening the door to big gains onward toward Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro.

With the balance of forces around Kursk already tilting slowly against Ukraine, “10,000 or so troops who are willing to fight could make a difference,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program. Any Ukrainian response would mean weakening that southern front, essentially turning the small North Korean deployment into a force multiplier for Moscow’s own beleaguered forces.

So Ukraine is not thrilled by this development?

Not at all. Ukraine’s head of military intelligence frets that the combination of North Korean munitions now backed by North Korean troops amounts to an undeclared world war. Zelensky, while not entirely clear on the number or composition of North Korean troops, is sure they are a threat that Ukraine’s Western partners must counter. Ukraine, which had no shortage of volunteers for the war in its early days, now sees manpower even more than materiel as perhaps its biggest challenge.

The limited good news for Kyiv is that the European Union will lend it up to 35 billion euros ($37 million), backed by interest from frozen Russian assets. The bad news is that the continuing Hungarian veto over making EU sanctions on Russia permanent, rather than requiring regular and contentious renewal, essentially prevents the United States from joining the bailout effort and ramping up financial assistance to Ukraine even further.

Meanwhile, Zelensky’s “victory plan,” which calls for more support, fewer Western restrictions on fighting Russia, and an actual path to NATO membership, was met with apathy in Western capitals, especially Washington. More battlefield reversals are the last thing Kyiv needs right now.

Read more here.