While thousands of North Korean soldiers could join the Ukrainian front, Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui and her Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu met this Friday in Moscow.
North Korea will stand by Russia until its «victoire» in Ukraine, the North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs warned in Moscow, at a time when the West denounces the deployment of thousands of North Korean soldiers near the front.
“There is no doubt that (…) the Russian army and people will achieve a great victory” in Ukraine, said Choe Son Hui, during a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. The latter greeted the “very close contacts (…) established between the military and the security services” of the two countries and expressed the «gratitude» from Moscow “for the principled position” North Korean. “We reaffirm that we will always stand firmly alongside our Russian comrades until Victory Day”added the North Korean minister, according to a Russian translation of her remarks.
Front line
Russia and North Korea, which view the United States as an existential enemy, have grown considerably closer since Vladimir Putin launched an assault on Ukraine in February 2022, with the two countries notably concluding a mutual defense agreement during the Russian president’s June visit to Pyongyang. North Korea has been suspected for many months of supplying large quantities of shells to Russia as well as hundreds of missiles. Now it would also provide thousands of troops to fight in the conflict with Ukraine.
Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied the arrival of these troops, but according to the West, they are about to be deployed on the battlefield, in the Russian region of Kursk where the Ukrainian army controls several hundreds of km2 since August. North Korea is also suspected of asking in exchange for technologies that will help it strengthen its nuclear arsenal, in particular its ballistic missiles.
Also read
Why ‘thousands’ of North Korean troops wouldn’t change the course of the Ukraine war
Citing American intelligence services, the head of diplomacy Antony Blinken indicated Thursday that of the 10,000 North Korean soldiers who, according to Washington, entered Russia, up to 8,000 “were deployed in the Kursk region”. “We have not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we expect this to happen in the coming days”he added.
Russia, he said, equipped North Korean soldiers with Russian uniforms and trained the troops in artillery, drones, basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, “which indicates that it intends to use these forces in front-line operations”. Such a deployment will constitute a new blow for Ukraine, which has seen the West procrastinating for months on the aid it requests. On the ground, Ukraine, already lacking men and ammunition, is retreating on multiple sections of the front. In October, the Russian army advanced by almost 500 km2 in Ukraine, the largest territorial gain in a month since March 2022 and the first weeks of the conflict.
Allies “wait”
And Americans and Europeans are greatly preventing Ukraine from using the missiles they have delivered on targets on Russian territory, for fear of provoking an escalation by the Kremlin. But for kyiv, it is the absence of Western firmness which encourages Vladimir Putin to escalate. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attacked the reaction “zero” Westerners to the deployment of North Korean soldiers and the internationalization of the war.
Friday evening, he again accused his allies of passivity. “Now we see all the sites where Russia is gathering these North Korean soldiers on its territory, all their camps. We could strike preemptively, if we had the capacity to strike far enough”declared Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing his allies of “just wait until the North Korean army starts hitting the Ukrainians” instead of providing long-range weapons “which she greatly needs”. In this context, South Korea, a major arms exporter, has indicated that it is studying the possibility of sending weapons directly to Ukraine in response. A few days before the American presidential election, Washington announced on Friday new military aid to Ukraine amounting to $425 million.
Also read
With the entry of North Korea, the war in Ukraine becomes international
The meeting between Sergei Lavrov and Choe Son Hui also comes at a time when North Korea is raising tensions with the firing of an intercontinental missile. Ms. Choe also said in Moscow that her country “will in no way change the course of strengthening its nuclear arsenal”.
At a Moscow train station, the two ministers unveiled a plaque in honor of the visit to Moscow by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, for a meeting with Joseph Stalin in 1949, a few months before the invasion of the south of the peninsula by the forces of the communist north, start of the Korean War. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un “try to be worthy of the contribution to our friendship that was made by our predecessors”commented Sergei Lavrov.
