The precise quantity and capabilities of North Korean troops deployed to bolster Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine remain unknown. But few observers are optimistic about the prospects for the imported fighters.
Officials estimate about 11,000 North Korean troops have moved into Russia’s Kursk region, and there is growing consensus that at least some have been on the battlefield. “They’re moving into Kursk for a reason,” United States Defense Department Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in mid-November 2024. “We have every expectation that they would be engaged in combat operations.”
North Korea first sent soldiers to Russia in October 2024 and eventually might deploy 100,000 troops, Bloomberg News reported.
Assessments of their capabilities are wide-ranging, BBC News stated. While the South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence services have said many of the troops are among Pyongyang’s best, military analysts question their value in the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its third year. They face language barriers and other interoperability challenges, along with unfamiliar terrain.
Despite being part of one of the world’s largest military forces with 1.28 million active soldiers, North Korean troops have not engaged in combat since the Korean War armistice in 1953. Pyongyang’s forces are “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness,” Mark Cancian, a senior advisor with the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the BBC in mid-November.
“The average Russian soldier is going to say, ‘What are they doing here? I’m having to hold their hand. I’m tripping over their bodies,’” Sydney Seiler, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea, told NBC News.
More than 1,000 Russian troops, including mercenaries, convicts and poor rural conscripts, reportedly are killed daily in the conflict, according to Western military officials. The North Korean regime’s troop deployment signals Moscow’s growing desperation amid heavy battlefield losses, analysts say.
“None would think they are going to Russia to die,” Choi Jung-hoon, a former first lieutenant in the North Korean army and the leader of an activist group in Seoul, South Korea, told Military.com. “But I think they’re cannon fodder because they will be sent to the most dangerous sites and will surely be killed.”
Pyongyang also has supplied Moscow with weapons including self-propelled howitzers and rocket launchers for its unprovoked war, the Firstpost website reported in late November. Russia reportedly is paying North Korea $2,000 a month for each deployed soldier, along with providing military technology that observers say could enhance North Korea’s illicit nuclear and missile programs.
Allies and partners including Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have condemned the North Korean deployment as a major escalation. In mid-November, Washington authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied missiles for the first time to strike deeper into Russia.
“It has been Russia that has escalated the conflict time and time again,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
