Is this a turning point in the war in Ukraine? For the first time since the attack carried out by Russia in February 2022, a third country would therefore have sent troops to fight on the ground. There are 10,000 North Korean soldiers already deployed in the Kursk region in Russia: that is in any case what Volodymyr Zelensky claims. Comments confirmed by South Korean leaders and by the Pentagon, the American Department of Defense. The proximity between Moscow and Pyongyang no longer needs to be demonstrated. Despite the sanctions it is subject to, North Korea supplies weapons to Russia. Last June, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un even signed a strategic partnership during a visit by the former to the latter.
But sending troops is something else. Certainly, 10,000 soldiers for a country, North Korea, which has 1.2 million men under the flag, is all in all derisory. Including in comparison with the Russian contingent mobilized to fight in Ukraine: around 500,000 soldiers.
Not enough to change the course of the war. But enough to change its nature.
What will Ukraine’s allies do, who are hesitant to authorize the use of long-range weapons on Russian territory, for fear of being considered belligerent and provoking a new escalation? to this military alliance on the ground?
To procrastinate as the Ukrainian president fears, or to commit more as he hopes? In an interview given to the newspaper l’Express and devoted to the strategy pursued by Pyongyang in this affair, Robert A. Manning, former advisor to the American Department of State under the presidency of George W Bush, prophesies: ” North Korea could be the match that sparks global chaos ».
Excessive dramatization?
Thomas Gomart : “When you look at it very broadly, there is a phenomenon, in my opinion, of historical reversal that is interesting to note. Asian countries or countries in the Middle East are becoming actors in European security. South Korea North, Iran, South Korea (which militarily supports a certain number of European countries, including Poland, and which has announced that it may have to directly support Ukraine militarily, which was not the case until now), Japan, (which has completely changed its position and which, today, supports Ukraine perhaps more than any other country within the G7). will say, from the Orient, in the very broad sense of the term, in European security, and much fewer European countries in Asian security. This illustrates the shift in the center of gravity and the provincialization of Europe on a global scale. “.
Bertrand Badie : “It is not really an alliance, but in any case common fronts with other states as varied and different as North Korea can be in relation to Russia or Belarus. From North Korea is a double demonstration. It is firstly the demonstration of what is a bit of strategic madness on the part of Mr. Kim Jong-un, that is to say, I am not only. a regional power, I am a world power And this is something of great concern, because the great battle today in international relations is for a certain number of states previously marginalized in the periphery or in the. third world, for whom it was a question of showing that we are a regional power There, it is not a regional power, it is a global power. The other demonstration effect is to provoke. a profound shift in Asia. This Russian-Korean collusion is redrawing the map of Asia to the great detriment of China.
