North Korean troops in Russia: how significant is it?

Since mid-October, Ukrainian officials had told the world that North Korea had deployed troops to Russia.

South Korea sounded the alarm too on 18 October.

But it was on Monday this week that NATO acknowledged, after weeks of reviewing intelligence reports, the presence of the troops in Russia.

Ukrainian and US intelligence services have reported that North Korea has deployed about 10,000 troops to eastern Russia over the past few weeks.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, citing US intelligence reports, said on Thursday that most of those soldiers - about 8,000 - have now been deployed to Russia's Kursk region and are within 50km of Ukraine's border.

Ukraine's army continues to hold a key foothold in Kursk following its surprise incursion into the region in July so logically, it looks as though Moscow plans to use the new troops in its efforts to dislodge the Ukrainians.

Russia, said Mr Blinken, plans to deploy the North Koreans into battle within the coming days.

If correct, it will mark the first time in Russia's war on Ukraine that a foreign country would act as a belligerent.

The development also draws in South Korea, heightening tension on the Korean peninsula and extending the war's geopolitical stakes to east Asia.

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Seoul is now considering to supply weapons directly to Ukraine, whereas it has provided non-lethal aid up until now.

South Korea sent its foreign and defence ministers to Washington DC this week for briefings with their American counterparts.

Its intelligence agency also briefed Nato officials and the intelligence agencies of Japan, Australia and New Zealand during the week on what they know about the covert troop deployments, signaling that Nato’s partners in the wider Indo-Pacific region are also concerned.

Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister who took up the post of Nato Secretary General last month, described the presence of North Korea troops in Russia as a "significant escalation" and "a dangerous expansion of Russia's war".

Pyongyang, said Mr Rutte, has already supplied Russia with millions of rounds of ammunition and ballistic missiles.

The delivery of those war goods from North Korea to Russia has taken place gradually since 2022, but was formalised last June when Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a strategic partnership agreement in Pyongyang.

That deal guarantees that Russia and North Korea will assist each other in the event of being attacked by another country.

"It's pretty profitable for both of them," Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian defence analyst, told RTÉ News.

"For North Korea, it's a chance to get huge Russian investments, okay, we'll say Chinese and Russian investments for the North Korean defence industry because of the production of ammunition.

"Now the North Koreans have a chance to have proper experience of modern warfare," said Mr Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, a thinktank in Kyiv.

South Korea's defence minister told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that North Korea's price for sending troops to Russia was likely access to Russian nuclear technology, a prospect that concerns the Seoul government given the regularity of ballistic missile tests by its northern neighbour.

In return, Russia gets ballistic missiles and millions of rounds of ammunition. And now, troops too.

The number of North Korean troops reportedly deployed to Russia to-date is minimal so it is hard to see them having a significant impact on the course of the battle in Kursk.

But it is not known whether this is a standalone deployment by Pyongyang or the first of many.

Russia certainly needs to fill its ranks with new recruits on a continual basis.

The British ministry of defence estimates that Russia is incurring 30,000 casualties in the war each month.

That casualty rate may have been as high as 40,000 troops, killed and wounded, in October, according to Estonia's military intelligence service.

And while the Kremlin regime is hesitant about issuing another widescale mobilisation order as it last did in September 2022, getting a regular monthly supply of North Korean troops to send into the "meat grinder" would fill a recruitment gap for the Russian army.

Pyongyang's decision to send troops could "help maintain a quantitative advantage on the ground for Moscow," said Astrid Chevreuil, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

The North Korean troop deployment, though symbolic at the moment, said Ms Chevreuil, also served Moscow's communication strategy.

"Russia could appear as having friends who would be ready to send people on the ground, while Ukraine only receives material support," she said.

Most of the North Korean troops sent to Russia are believed to be light infantry units so they would most likely be sent into battle as small squads using light arms and mortars.

The North Koreans also have no experience of drone warfare and in a war where drones do a lot of killing, it would be a bloody learning experience for the new combatants.

If the North Korean troops are only engaged to fight on Russian territory in Kursk, then the US and Nato are unlikely to react, said Mr Samus.

But it is also not certain how Nato would react if they were deployed to fight on Ukrainian territory.

"To be honest, Nato absolutely is not ready for this situation," believes Mr Samus, adding that the alliance can criticise such a development but "cannot provide any decisive, practical solutions".

There could be a role for China to play in all of this too.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that US officials have already held talks with senior Chinese diplomats to use their influence on Pyongyang to halt further troop deployments.

A Pentagon spokesperson said during the week that there would be no limitations placed on Ukraine to use US-supplied weapons to target North Korean troops as co-belligerents in the war.

Ukraine, of course, has long been asking the US and its European Nato partners to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons against Russian military targets within Russia. It would strike Kyiv as odd if they were only allowed to use western-supplied weaponry to target North Korean units and not Russian ones.

The deployment of North Korean troops offers a worrying development, showcasing Russia's willingness to use new tactics in order to prolong the war.

If the troops are to be used in Ukraine itself, any future reaction from the US and, more broadly, Nato, may depend on who wins Tuesday's US presidential election.