After a week of saying they had no evidence of North Korean troops in Russia, officials at the White House, Pentagon and NATO have now gone on the record to say Pyongyang has indeed deployed a significant number of soldiers.
“We know that thousands of DPRK troops are in Russia to be trained,” a senior Biden administration official told The War Zone Wednesday morning. “We don’t know what their mission will be or if they’ll go on to fight in Ukraine. But we do know that if they do this, it signals President Putin’s growing desperation in his war against Ukraine. Russia is suffering extraordinary casualties on the battlefield every day. If Russia needs to turn to DPRK for manpower, that’s a sign of desperation – not strength – on the part of the Kremlin.”
Traveling with reporters in Rome, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin offered similar insights.
“Our analysts … continue to look at this,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “Now we are seeing evidence that there are North Korean troops that have gone to … Russia.”
While the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told us that there are nearly 12.000 North Koreans in Russia training to fight Ukraine, Austin said the Pentagon has yet to determine how many and what they will do.
“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen. But, yes, there is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” he added, using the abbreviation for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Asked about the intent of North Korea’s deployment, Austin said the United States is still trying to determine that.
“If they’re co-belligerents, if their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue,” he said. “It will have impacts, not only in Europe. It will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”
In Brussels, NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah also noted the presence of North Korean troops in Russia.
“Allies have confirmed evidence of a DPRK deployment to Russia,” she said, according to a tweet from Voice of America national security correspondent Jeff Selden. “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 line.”
NATO is “actively consulting within the alliance on this matter,” Dakhlallah added. “The North Atlantic Council will receive a briefing from the ROK (South Korea) and further discuss this matter soon.”
We have been reporting for more than two weeks about the presence of North Korean troops deployed to Russia to bolster its fight against Ukraine. Yesterday, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of GUR, told us that the first of those troops were expected to be on the battlefield in Kursk today. We have asked him for an update on that claim and will report any pertinent details he provides.
While Budanov told us that there are nearly 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, South Korean intelligence officials on Wednesday said there are about 3,000 at the moment with a total of 10,000 expected, the country’s Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday. About 1,500 are elite special operations forces.
“After the first batch arrived in Russia from Oct. 8-13, an additional 1,500 soldiers have been sent there,” Rep. Park Sun-won of the main opposition Democratic Party told reporters, citing a report by National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Cho Tae-yong.
The troops have yet to arrive at the front and are instead stationed at military facilities in Russia where they are adjusting to their new circumstances, the publication reported.
Last week we reported that the NIS released its assessment of the situation, which included satellite images purporting to show North Korean troops training in Russia’s far east. However, the number of troops and if they are even North Korean cannot be confirmed by the satellite imagery provided.
You can see one of those images below.
“The soldiers are undergoing special training on how to use military equipment and fly unmanned aerial vehicles, among other things,” Yonhap stated.
A North Korean soldier receives around US $2,000 monthly for the service to Russia, NIS said.
“Russian instructors believe that North Korean soldiers are fit both physically and mentally, but they lack the understanding of modern warfare, such as drone attacks,” Yonhap reported. “‘They also expect multiple casualties among the North Koreans,’ the NIS was quoted as saying by the lawmaker.”
At least six of Pyongyang’s forces, as we previously noted, have already been killed in Ukraine.
All this comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a draft law to the Russian State Duma recently seeking ratification of a strategic partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, hammered out in June. It calls for each side to provide military assistance to each other in the event of war.
The exchange is not out of the goodness of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s heart. Moscow is providing him with nuclear weapons technology in return, Budanov told The Economist.
“Budanov describes the secret provisions of the agreement as a quid pro quo,” the publication reported. “Russian hard cash and know-how in return for Korean men and missiles. Russia is helping North Korea circumvent sanctions and ‘strengthen’ its nuclear capabilities.”
In particular, Budanov said Russia “is transferring some technologies for low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and submarine missile-launch systems.”
However, The Economist noted, “there is no independent corroboration of this alarming claim.”
Officials at the White House, Pentagon and NATO have yet to say how they would respond if North Korean troops engage on a large scale in battles with Ukrainian forces. As we noted yesterday, U.S. officials, East Asian diplomats and congressional aides are saying there is not much the U.S. to stop North Korea from sending troops to Russia.
“They concede that Washington has made little to no progress in slowing North Korea’s rogue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and if it can’t do that, it can only do so much to halt North Korean troop deployments to Russia, too,” those sources told Politico.
The presence of even 12,000 North Korean troops may not drastically alter the outcome of the fight even if about 1,500 of them are said to be elite special operations forces. However, with plenty more at his disposal, Kim could eventually increase the supply of troops to Russia dramatically.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com