Are 10,000 North Korean Soldiers Really Heading for Ukraine?

Will 10,000 North Korean Soldiers Join Russia’s War in Ukraine?

This is what the Ukrainian president said Vladimir Zelensky warned during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, calling any North Korean intervention “the first step to world war.”

He also revealed that “tactical personnel” as well as military officers from the totalitarian state were already on the ground in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

“From our intelligence we have information about this North Korea sent tactical personnel and officers to Ukraine to temporarily occupied territories and they are preparing 10,000 soldiers on their soil, but they have not moved them already to Ukraine or to Russia,” Mr. Zelensky said at a press conference with Mark Rutte, the new Secretary General of NATO.

The intelligence has yet to be confirmed by Western officials, but the UK, US and other allies are believed to be monitoring the situation closely.

The deployment of North Korean troops would be a significant step in backing Moscow from Pyongyang, which has already provided large quantities of munitions, including artillery shells and ballistic missiles.

The move would also be a clear indication of the consequences the devastating casualty rates among Russian forces in Ukraine have had on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to generate sufficient numbers of new Russian recruits to push forward.

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Western officials put the daily loss in September among Russian military personnel — killed and wounded in Ukraine — at 1,217.

That level of attrition means that even thousands of North Korean troops equates to “not many days of casualties, which is kind of filling the gap,” a Western official told reporters at a briefing.

There are also questions about how the North Koreans would integrate into a Russian chain of command.

“On a practical level, how does command and control work?” the official said, referring to how Russian commanders on the ground in Ukraine would be able to tell North Korean soldiers what to do.

“Does it [the North Koreans and the Russians] do you have radios that talk to each other? Can they speak a common language? How do you integrate them into the force?” the official said.

Another question that must surely be on the mind of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Unis the potential for all the soldiers he sent from his isolated nation to desert and refuse to return.

“I think it’s a really interesting moment,” the Western official said.

“It can pretty fundamentally undermine – not necessarily the whole – but certainly the idea. And if there are significant numbers, that’s a really interesting dynamic for us.”