| Reports that North Korean troops would join Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine have been circulating for a while. Now Putin has confirmed this is indeed happening.
How do we interpret this new escalation? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Brussels last week that North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 troops, calling this “a first step to a world war.”
Though it made headlines, strictly speaking, 10,000 North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia are unlikely to be a game changer. A six-digit number, however, could be.
North Korea is a nuclear power, but it is not going to declare war on Ukraine, nor is it going to launch punitive strikes with ballistic missiles when its mercenaries get killed.
Simply put, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un has, from the outset, realised that Russia’s military adventure in Ukraine could bring him benefits. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a pariah state, and its relations, even with Russia and China, were not great.
But since Russia encountered difficulties in Ukraine, North Korea leveraged its importance by supplying millions of ammunition shells which Russia obviously lacks.
When he started the aggression, Putin did not imagine the war would drag on for so long. Although Russia’s economy has taken to a war footing, it needed North Korean supplies. In recent months, reportedly, every second shell fired against Ukraine is produced in North Korea.
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