What does North Korea get out of sending its soldiers to fight Russia's war?
Kim Jong Un is sending North Korean troops to aid Russia's war in Ukraine. What might he be getting to help Vladimir Putin?
It is clear what Russia stands to gain from an influx of some 10,000 North Korean troops to aid its war in Ukraine. Less apparent is what might be in it for Kim Jong Un.
Pyongyang’s seemingly imminent entry into Moscow’s war is a watershed moment that further complicates the international web of interests entangled in a conflict that is fast approaching its thousandth day. To many observers, it risks escalating the conflict by connecting rising tensions in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
Kim has spent months issuing mounting threats against his southern neighbors and working to enhance his nuclear arsenal, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in his own saber-rattling with the West as his military lost scores of men to make battlefield gains. Now the two are intensifying their partnership, alarming the United States and its allies.
“North Korea might be getting combat experience with drones and some real combat experience in a 21st century war,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, told NBC News. “But that is secondary to the strategic capabilities that they might obtain from Russia — and I think that the concern on the South Korean side is exactly driven by this.”
The Pentagon on Monday confirmed that around 10,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia for training and are presumed to be joining the fight against Ukraine within “the next several weeks.” Some of those units have already started making their way West toward Ukraine, and may join the Kremlin’s forces struggling to expel Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region, according to the Pentagon.
Rating: 5