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The United States and NATO on Wednesday confirmed that hundreds, possibly thousands, of North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia, raising fears they are headed to fight in Ukraine. Experts warn it could backfire, as their exposure to the outside world and realization they will serve as “cannon fodder” may spur what Kim Jong-un fears most: defections.
“There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday, for the first time confirming an October 18 report by South Korea’s intelligence agency (NIS) that Pyongyang was propping up Moscow with manpower, and had, as a first step, sent around 1,500 soldiers to Russia’s Far East to train for the trenches. The transfers had taken place between October 8-13, NIS reported, and warned that more were expected soon.
Read Also: N-Korea Has Sent 3,000 Troops To Russia Against Ukraine – US
“[It’s] very, very serious,” Austin said.
Shortly afterwards, NATO also confirmed it had evidence of a North Korean troop deployment to Russia.
“If these troops are destined to fight in Ukraine, it would mark a significant escalation in North Korea’s support for Russia’s illegal war and yet another sign of Russia’s significant losses on the front lines,” NATO Spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement.
The news comes as South Korean lawmakers say the North Korean troop numbers have now swelled to as many as 3,000, and that the total is expected to land at around 10,000.
On October 15, barely a week after the first North Korean soldiers are believed to have arrived in Russia, Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne reported that hundreds of North Korean troops had already been deployed close to the front in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions, some seven kilometres from Ukraine’s border. Among them,18 of them had already deserted their positions, it said, citing Ukrainian intelligence sources.
Follow-up reports in Ukrainian media suggested the troops abandoned their postings after being left in a forest area without food or instructions from their Russian counterparts. They were later found and detained by Russian forces.
Although the reports could not be independently verified, they do shine a light on a very particular challenge Moscow and Pyongyang potentially face in trying to incorporate North Korean soldiers alongside the Russian army: their exposure to the world outside of Kim’s North Korea.
“They’re going to find themselves in situations where they can see the light, the lie,” Hugh Griffiths, a UN sanctions specialist and former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, said, adding that the harsh realities of war, and the difficulty in keeping these troops isolated from the Russian soldiers are bound to have “profound implications on their worldview”.
“North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, millions are technically under arms, but it’s not a good army, it relies on mass, and none of the soldiers have been battlefield-tested,” he said, noting that Kim’s propaganda that North Korea is “invincible” will be the first bubble to burst, and impact morale.
“The Ukrainians are going to bomb them, and you’re going to see North Korean defeat. That’s not something you see in North Korea: them dying, them not making any progress, them not getting to Kyiv on the back of Russian tanks. It’s not going to go well for them.”
