The story of the possible sending of troops of the North Korean regime to the war in Ukraine recently took a new turn. when reports surfaced that North Korea planned to send engineering units for “restoration” on the territory of Eastern Ukraine occupied by the Russian army.
Defence-ua.com assessed the prospects of involving the North Koreans in the war against Ukraine on the side of the Kremlin and described this idea as strange. It is not excluded that at some point North Korean soldiers will face the ZSU, but they will be presented as “volunteers” who have joined the Russian army in one of the private armies, and not as regular troops of a third country fighting in Ukraine.< /p>
According to The Military Balance 2023, the DPRK army has “5 to 8 engineer regiments” and one pontoon-bridge regiment. That is, it is clear that North Korea does not have the number of engineer troops to make this seem like an interesting proposition to the Russian invaders.
Furthermore, let us recall that only as part of the “partial mobilization” in the fall of 2022, Russia formed at least five new engineer regiments, and in this way the occupiers created a sufficiently large number of forces and means that allowed them to build quite powerful fortifications in a short time.
By the fall of 2023, the Russian invaders have already built fortifications with a total length of 6 thousand kilometers. All this generally emphasizes that at the moment the story about the possible attraction of engineering troops from North Korea to act on the side of Russia seems at least somewhat strange, the publication notes.
The possibility of North Korea providing the Kremlin with “live power” to fight against Ukraine. And here comes the key point: they can be presented as “volunteers” and not part of Kim Jong Un's regular army. Pyongyang knows very well that if it sends its combat units against the Ukrainian army, it cannot go unnoticed by the US and South Korea.
The Pentagon is closely monitoring the possibility of North Korea sending its own combat forces against the Ukrainians. “It is something we are following closely. "I think if I were North Korea's military leadership, I would consider sending my forces as cannon fodder in an illegal war against Ukraine," Pentagon spokesman General Patrick Ryder said. We saw Russia's losses, he added.