Ukrainian intelligence warns that Russia is preparing to receive as many as 30,000 more soldiers from North Korea and with them fresh rocket launchers. If the informing is confirmed, it will be the biggest power of the Russian army so far by the government from Pyongyang. The alliance of Moscow and North Korea is increasingly internationalizing the war just beyond NATO's east border.
Warning from Kiev
President Volodymyr Zelenski informed about the plans to relocate the fresh contingent, citing the findings of Ukrainian intelligence. According to this information, Russia has been preparing in the Vorone region since June to host thousands more North Korean soldiers. Pyongyang would deliver fresh ballistic rocket launchers and ammunition supplies at the same time.
Thirty 1000 remains a forecast for now, not a confirmed fact. akin estimates of Ukrainian services were given a year earlier, in the summertime of 2025. However, the scale of the announced reinforcement speaks much about the condition of the Russian army, which, despite years of war, inactive has problem filling its own ranks and reaching for reserves abroad.
First wave and its price
It wouldn't be the first specified transfer. In the fall of 2024, about eleven, 12 1000 North Korean soldiers were sent to the Kursk region, which was confirmed independently by American, South Korean and Ukrainian interviews. For many months Moscow and Pjongjang were silent; this was officially granted only in the spring of 2025 erstwhile Kim Jong Un called sent soldiers "heroes".
The price of this operation was high. According to South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence estimates, who were evidently insecure, respective 1000 Koreans were killed or injured in the fighting. Soldiers sent from a closed country, without experience in modern war, became, as analysts note, inexpensive assault material.
Alliance signed for years
The military cooperation of both regimes has a solid basis. In June 2024 Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un signed a comprehensive strategical partnership agreement in Pyongyang, the key article of which obliges the parties to common armed assistance. The agreement entered into force at the end of the same year.
North Korea is not limited to humans. According to Ukrainian intelligence, it has supplied Russia with about a 100 and 50 ballistic missiles and millions of artillery ammunition, and any analysts estimation that Pjongjang missiles are liable for much of Russian shelling today. In return, Kim receives money, technology and invaluable combat experience for his army.
Cooperation does not end with combat units. South Korean intelligence reported that since autumn 2025 North Korea has besides directed thousands of construction troops and bomb squads to relieve Russian forces on engineering work and reconstruction. Pyongyang gradually becomes for Moscow not only a supplier of cannon meat, but a permanent staff and industrial base.
A front that touches Europe
The war in Ukraine is increasingly becoming a local conflict. The engagement of North Korea on the side of Russia combines the 2 most hostile Western regimes into 1 war mechanics in which the Asian dictator tests arms and trains soldiers on the European front. For Poland, on the front line of the east flank of NATO, it is simply a signal that the hazard is not a distant dispute, but the form of the safety of the full continent. The question is how long the West will treat this alliance as an exotic episode alternatively than a permanent component of the fresh power arrangement.
Source: Defence24
