The Secretary of Defense of the United States, Lloyd Austin, arrived this Monday at Kyiv at a very delicate moment for Ukraine. To the growing setbacks on the eastern front, the damage to its energy system and the impossibility of recruiting enough soldiers, is now added the arrival of north korean troops to fight in the Russian ranks, as kyiv and the South Korean Government have denounced.
Nor the draconian demands raised by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in his call “Victory plan” have received a firm response from Washington and every day there are more and more people in the US who doubt the meaning of a war in which Ukraine has little chance of defeating Moscow and the only proposals presented by the kyiv Government involve a direct and suicidal clash between NATO and Russia.
Within the Atlantic Alliance, voices have already been raised, such as those from Slovakia or Hungary, who oppose Ukraine’s entry into NATO at the end of the war, as President Zelensky has once again insisted in his Victory Plan.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stated this Sunday that Ukraine must remain neutral and accused the US and Europe of prolonging the war with the aim of defeating Russia, something they are not achieving.
Zelensky insists on his Victory Plan that convinces no one
But fatigue and distrust are beginning to spread even among those who defend the war to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is why the Victory Plan that Zelensky presented last week among the NATO Defense Ministers and in the Council itself European Union, was received with little enthusiasm and only a handful of countries gave their full support.
Zelensky indicated this Monday that he had addressed with Austin the point of the Ukrainian Victory Plan that refers to the need to obtain permission from the United States and the aforementioned NATO countries to attack military targets inside Russia. The White House did not comment on a possibility that it is not currently contemplating, as it could trigger an escalation of tension with Russia.
The US Secretary of Defense did promise during his visit to kyiv a new $400 million aid package in weapons for Ukraine, in ammunition, armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons. This is the second shipment of weapons of a similar amount that the United States agrees to deliver to Ukraine in less than a month.
North Korean brigades
However, Austin did not give his Ukrainian allies any answer that would reassure them about one of the greatest concerns in the general staff and the Government in kyiv, that is, the incorporation of battalions of North Korean soldiers into the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. between 10,000 and 12,000 troops, as revealed by the intelligence services of Ukraine and South Korea.
The supposed North Korean contingent, without being very numerous, could change some things on the front if it were deployed in Kursk and there help in the expulsion or elimination of the Ukrainian troops that became strong in this region of southern Russia at the beginning. August, but where they have remained stagnant.
The Kremlin, for now, is silent. This Monday, his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, avoided directly answering questions from journalists about the presence of North Korean soldiers among the Russian combat forces deployed in Ukraine and simply limited himself to pointing out that there was “many contradictions” about this information.
South Korean intelligence services do assume that at least 1,500 North Korean soldiers are already in Russia receiving military training to be deployed in Ukraine.
“This is just the beginning”
There is various footage of alleged North Korean soldiers waiting to receive their new uniform, as well as images of the forms they must fill out, with parts in Russian and parts in Korean, to obtain these military clothes.
Other images, obtained by the American network CNN, show North Korean troops at the Russian Sergeevka training camp, near the border with China. In these recordings, someone is heard pointing out in Russian that they are “the new reinforcements”, that there are millions of these soldiers and that “this is just the beginning”, because “there is more”.
This information must be taken with caution. The denunciation of North Korean troops bound for Ukraine may be intended to attract Western attention and increase American and European support just when mistrust is running high.
But Zelensky insists that there are thousands of North Korean soldiers preparing to be deployed to Ukraine, at least 10,000 troopsbetween infantry forces and technical personnel. According to Zelensky, the deployment will take place on November 1 in Kursk to crush the Ukrainian advance.
A Russian-North Korean mutual military aid agreement
The North Korean army has about 1.2 million soldiers. Many of its commanders have received military training in China and the oldest in the Soviet Union, before its disappearance in 1991. The war in Ukraine has made it possible to renew that military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.
It received a strong boost with the visit that Russian President Vladimir Putin made last June to the capital of North Korea. Putin signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a mutual military assistance agreement included in a treaty of strategic partnership broader in the event that one of the two countries were attacked.
This treaty could thus be invoked by Moscow to garner North Korean military support in Ukraine. As the US did with NATO when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
In June, Kim Jong-un himself pledged his “full support and solidarity with the struggles of the Russian Government, Army and people,” and shortly before signing the strategic partnership treaty with Russia, he stated that the invasion of Ukraine was aimed “protect one’s own sovereignty, security and territorial stability” Russian.
Although since the beginning of the year there has been talk of the transfer by North Korea of missiles, drones and especially artillery ammunition to be used by Russia in Ukraine, and despite the fact that there are images of fragments of North Korean missiles collected from the field of battle, Moscow and Pyongyang continue to deny that military cooperation.
South Koreans do believe it exists. This Monday, South Korean First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Hong-kyun, urged the Russian ambassador in Seoul, Georgy Zinoviev, “to Immediate withdrawal of North Korean troops of Russia and to cancel any type of military collaboration with North Korea with a view to its implementation in Ukraine.
An escalation in war
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter stressed this Monday that “sending North Korean troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine would represent a significant escalation” in the conflict.
Rutte already spoke last week with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, and then he indicated that NATO did not yet have enough evidence to accept the information about the North Korean deployment in Ukraine, but that he was in contact with Seoul to receive all the information. information available in this regard.
The European Union He also spoke out against any type of North Korean participation in the Ukrainian war, both with the transfer of military material and with the sending of soldiers.
“If reports about the transfer of soldiers from North Korea to Russia are confirmed, this would mark another level of escalation and a significant increase in their cooperation there” in an open defiance of international law, said the EU Foreign Affairs spokesman. , Peter Stano, in his press conference this Monday.
According to Stano, North Korea “is a actor that seriously disrupts stability and peace and securitynot only in the region, but globally”, so relying on him “only exposes Russia’s weakness and its growing isolation.”
The Russian reasons
It does not seem that the dispatch of North Korean troops to the war in Ukraine is due to a weakness on the part of Russia or a lack of military personnel, as is happening in the Ukrainian Army.
Russia is turning around the Western strategy of supporting Ukraine without limits, with weapons and money, without anyone in Europe or the United States protesting against this interference in a bilateral conflict between former Soviet countries.
Interference that, since the war began, has shown Western interests in creating a new security system in Europe based on Russian attrition and its cornering with the NATO extension to the Scandinavian peninsula and Ukraine, despite the repeated warnings that Moscow has been giving since the 1990s.
By turning to North Korea or Iran’s weapons, and even with the ambiguity of the acquisition of Chinese dual-use technology, Moscow is sending a strong, as well as worrying, message: there are no international rules that I will respect and will turn to whatever allies it must turn to if the West does the same with Ukraine. Nor is he willing to negotiate this new international security system under Washington’s leadership.
By including Pyongyang in this conflict, Russia is also telling the US that its hegemonism in Asia and the Pacific, surrounding China, North Korea and Russia itself to the east, is rejected by Moscow, which is willing to intervene in the geopolitics of the area with asymmetric measures, such as this extension of the Ukrainian war to the East.
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