2 months ago
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Russian dictator Vladimir Putin visited fellow autocrat Kim Jong Un earlier this month, resulting in a new Russia-North Korea defense pact. As part of the deal, Russia agrees to provide North Korea with higher-precision weapons it can aim at Seoul. In return, Russia gets a unique rendition of the Russian anthem and more of the unreliable artillery shells it needs to fill out its dwindling stockpile.
However, Putin also seems to have emerged from the deal with something that many were not expecting—North Korean troops on the ground in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the Kyiv Post reported that Pyongyang had announced that it was sending “a military engineering unit” to Donetsk Oblast. Russia has controlled portions of this region since 2014, but this is also the area where it recently forced Ukrainian troops from the ruined town of Avdiivka after months of hard fighting. Russian forces partially occupied the village of Novooleksandrivka this week as they continue to press forward in this area. It’s unclear whether the North Korean unit would be deployed inside the long-occupied areas of Donetsk, or positioned closer to the front lines.
While the official line is that North Korean troops will help Russian forces rebuild some of the areas they destroyed through bombardment with heavy artillery and glide bombs, a U.S. Defense Department briefing on Tuesday offered a different possibility: Russia may use North Korean forces as “cannon fodder.”
