A terror is stalking Europe. That, at least, is the impression you get from Kyiv. As Andriy Yermak, head of the country’s office of the president proclaimed, a new “axis of evil” is forming right across the planet, developing into a thoroughgoing military alliance that “challenges democracies and the world order”. And certainly, you can understand his fears to a point. North Korea, after all, is apparently planning to deploy some 10,000 troops to bolster Russia’s war effort, even as Pyongyang may now be supplying half of Moscow’s artillery shells.
Yet if a June 2024 agreement between the countries is certainly worrying, especially when dovetailed by Chinese sabre-rattling in the Pacific, the West is facing less an axis of evil than of convenience. The truth is that Vladmir Putin is deeply reliant on Kim Jong Un — and the help he’s getting from the hermit kingdom is basically a sign of weakness, not strength.
The sudden appearance of North Koreans in their country was unsurprisingly greeted by alarm in Kyiv. And considering how the conflict is going, Yermak’s dramatic language surely makes sense. Over the last few months, after all, the Russians have made grinding gains right across Ukraine, sometimes advancing as much as a kilometre a day and threatening strategically significant cities like Pokrovsk. To an extent, meanwhile, the recent alliance between Moscow and Pyongyang reflects a long-standing amity. The countries have enjoyed generally warm relations since Putin’s ascension to the presidency 25 years ago. Among other things, Pyongyang played host to one of the president’s first state visits abroad, when he hailed the Soviet army’s special role in “liberating” North Korea from Japanese occupation in 1945.
Nonetheless, Moscow issued firm condemnations of North Korea’s erratic and dangerous behaviour on the international stage in the mid-2000s, when Putin hoped to burnish his international reputation by playing mediator on the Korean Peninsula. No less important, the sweep of Russian history demonstrates the real balance of power between the two countries. During the early years of the Cold War, the North Korean regime relied on Soviet help to carve out territory. From there, it spent decades oppressing its population while dodging Soviet retaliation. While the Kim dynasty never Russian pariahs, in other words, they were always treated as junior partners, to be praised or scolded as it suited Moscow.
Since his 2022 invasion, however, Putin has been desperate for partners wherever he can find them. Now, the president makes naked attempts to rewrite history and paint Russia and Korea as old and equal partners. The security partnership signed this year, and North Korea’s increasing provision of soldiers and shells, seem to suggest that equality is being embraced by both sides. Yet despite the pageantry of the official dinners, and the finesse of the PR statements, Putin is clearly desperate for Kim Jong Un’s support.
Notwithstanding recent Russia’s victories around places like Pokrovsk, that’s fundamentally down to its broad geopolitical frailty. Russia is today struggling with a deep crisis in military recruitment, fuelled mainly by the huge losses it’s suffered at the front. Each month, 30,000 men enter the military — and the same number are invalided home or killed on the battlefield. Despite the vast bonuses offered to contract soldiers who choose to enlist, which by some measures now account for 1.5% of the Russian spending, the state is still forced to scour the globe for mercenaries to support its war. A division of raw North Korean conscripts, ignorant of Russian and unfamiliar with their officers, would vanish if thrown into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
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SubscribeDr. Garner is right. 10,000 men from North Korea won’t win the war for Putin (although they may be much better trained than Dr. Garner imagines). But North Korea has 1.3m men in its regular army. 10,000 could expand to 50,000 or 100,000 quite easily. Then what?
Wrong, the North Korean military is in horrible shape, They don’t have the economic bass to sustain such a massive military. Much of their equipment is old and obsolete and in a bad state of repair and have allowed much of it to decay In pursuit of nuclear weapons .The fact being that the military is also extremely politicized also does not help matters and corruption is a huge problem in North Korea. The only reason why the North Koreans do not try anything against the south is because they would get hammered and what’s keeping the regime in place of an external threat is its nuclear arsenal and it’s ability to rain havoc on the Korean peninsula through massive artillery bombardments of Seoul. Essentially their whole military strategy is reliant on the idea that they Will be defeated in a conflict with the South and America, but they will make the cost so high that their enemies will be reluctant to actually initiate a war with them. They do this for a position of weakness not strength, and such strategy if they actually take part in offensive military operations in Ukraine is not going to work there do to being far away from their home. The real role of the North Korean military is to protect the regime from internal threats.
“apparently planning”, presumably like Iraq apparently had WMD…