Speculation has built for weeks over the presence of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia inside Ukraine, and now President Zelensky has acknowledged their presence for the first time.
North Korea, which on paper has one of the largest armies in the world and has been supplying munitions to Russia for months to feed what it calls its special military operation inside Ukraine for months may now be providing direct military aid, Kyiv states for the first time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to admit what has been discussed by other world leaders and Ukraine war watchers for weeks in his nightly address, reports German newspaper Die Welt, which translates his speech as stating ‘North Korean soldiers are fighting together with Russians’.
Ukrainian state media published Zelensky’s address, in which he said of the development: “We see the alliance between [Russia] and such regimes as North Korea becoming stronger, and is no longer simply the transfer of weapons, it is about the transfer of people from North Korea to the military forces of the occupier.”
This development is a clear sign Ukraine’s demands for more weapons, and for permission for the weapons it has already been given to be used in long-range strikes against the Russian interior to degrade its war machine must be heeded. He continued: “It is obvious in such circumstances our relations with partners need to develop further. The frontline needs more support. When we talk about giving Ukraine greater long-range capabilities and more decisive supplies for our forces, it’s not simply a list of military equipment”.
While many foreign nationalities fight in Ukraine, both for Kyiv and for Moscow, the support of the North Korean army could be a significant boost to Russia. On paper, the nation fields and army over one million strong, but as with anything inside secretive nations long under the yoke of communism, to what extent all or a fraction of that total is ready to deploy is obscure.
North Korea does have some apparent advantages, however. While the free world made the very most of the ‘peace dividend’ at the end of the Cold War, cutting military spending and redirecting that money to other purposes — and cutting expensive stockpiles of weapons in the process — North Korea has not, and consequently has 20th-century levels of reserves of Soviet-type ammunition in reserve.
Russia has been drawing on these deep reserves from North Korea, it seems, for months. In August it was reported Russia had received 13,000 shipping containers of munitions from Pyongyang. As many as half of all the artillery shells Russia now uses in Ukraine may be North Korean, it has been stated, but this comes at a cost, with claims that many of them — perhaps as many as half — are decades old and are now duds.
While Zelensky’s apparent admission North Korean soldiers are active in Ukraine is the first such Presidential remarks on the matter, it has been discussed both within and without the invaded nation for weeks. Breitbart News reported earlier this month on the remarks of the South Korean defence minister, who weighing the actions of their northern neighbour reflected it is “highly likely” North Korea had sent soldiers to fight in Ukraine, and probably has suffered casualties there.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun had said: “We assess that the occurrence of casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine is highly likely, considering various circumstances”. The Times of London has also separately reported on the subject, citing a source in the Ukrainian government who explained this month: “The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] military, in limited numbers, mostly engineers, are overseeing the quality and use of Pyongyang weapons by the Russian army. Some have already died.”
