North Korean Troops Would ‘Almost Certainly Have Issues’ in Ukraine: UK

Russian and North Korean troops jointly fighting in Ukraine would very likely have problems working together along the front lines, the British government said on Sunday.

“Russian and DPRK forces would almost certainly experience interoperability difficulties having not previously carried out joint military exercises,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said in a post to social media, referring to North Korea by its official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Ukrainian, South Korean and Western intelligence have said in recent weeks that North Korea was sending between 10,000 and 12,000 soldiers to Russia to bolster Moscow’s war effort against Kyiv.

The U.S. said on Thursday that around 8,000 were stationed on the border with Ukraine. “We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said during a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and South Korea’s Foreign and Defense Ministers, Cho Tae-yul, and Kim Yong-hyun.

Newsweek has emailed the Russian defense ministry and the North Korean permanent mission to the UN for comment.

Western governments have denounced the move as dangerous and a significant escalation to the grinding war, now more than two and a half years in. North Korea has been a major supplier of munitions and missiles to Russia, and signed a mutual defense pact with Moscow earlier this year.

North Korean foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, said late last week that Russia will “achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to protect the sovereign rights and security interests.”

“We also assure that until the day of victory we will firmly stand alongside our Russian comrades,” she said.

“DPRK troops conducting combat operations would almost certainly have issues integrating into Russia’s command and control structure, and working around the language barrier with Russian forces,” the British government said.

Experts told Newsweek last week that coming from North Korea’s cutoff society, there may be issues with communication and working smoothly alongside Russian forces.

“Although North Korean troops are undergoing training in Russian military facilities in the Far East, differences in language, culture, training, and warfighting doctrine, could diminish the effectiveness of North Korean forces until they are better integrated with Russian units,” said Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies.

But there are a few key advantages for Russia and North Korea in the move. Even 10,000 troops offers a boost to Russia’s available manpower, and these fighters are believed to be at least partially from Pyongyang’s elite forces, tasked with infiltration and assassinations.

Despite their unfamiliarity with Russia’s territory and weapons stockpiles, they probably will not need extensive training on the guns, rifles, mortars and other explosives Russia uses against Ukraine, said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King’s College London.

It is “almost certain” that at least some of the fighters have been sent to Kursk, the U.K. government said. Kyiv’s GUR military intelligence service said last month that it had detected North Korean troops in Kursk.

Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia’s border Kursk region almost three months ago took Russia and many international observers by surprise. Moscow still hasn’t managed to strip back Kyiv’s grip on the area it controls in Russia, known as the Ukrainian salient, although it has retaken some of the territory Ukraine grasped in the summer in the past few weeks.

“They may be useful in pushing Ukrainian troops out of the areas of the Kursk region,” Yeo said.