It is no coincidence that the moment the collective West takes its eyes off the war in Ukraine, other international actors have stepped in.
Earlier this month, at the exact same time that President Zelensky unveiled his Victory Plan to a preoccupied Washington, a fragmented Brussels, and an increasingly disinterested London, South Korean and now US intelligence confirmed that the first of up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers had been mobilised to fight in Ukraine.
South Korean intelligence was so clear it even confirmed through facial recognition technology a North Korean soldier at a Russian missile launch site in eastern Ukraine this weekend.
Compounding Western fears that Europe’s most destructive war in 80 years is at risk of spreading beyond Ukraine and indeed Russia, the flag of North Korea was spotted alongside a Russian position near the embattled city of Pokrovsk, on the main road to Dnipro from Donetsk.
The implications for this are stark. Whilst the flag itself may be part of a Russian disinformation and psychological operation – a possibility never to be discounted – the intelligence does support the theory that North Koreans are now inside Ukraine, threatening to turn this regional war truly global.
That last point is no gimmick. South Korean officials have openly declared that they are now prepared to send military aid to Ukraine in response to the North – almost certainly a North Korean response would follow, whether increasing troops to Ukraine or causing further instability around the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea is one of the world’s leading producers of advanced military hardware (just look at all the South Korean tanks being supplied as part of Poland’s enormous re-armament). South Korean aid would come at a crucial time for Ukraine’s defences, as Zelensky tries what is almost certainly his final last push to bring the conflict to a close that is favourable in Kyiv’s terms – and not Moscow’s.
The US presidential election has all but tanked any meaningful medium-long term strategic thinking by the Pentagon and State Department, and speculation is mounting that a Trump presidency would likely cut both political support and military aid. North Korean soldiers fighting in Europe is bad news, but it could also be a small blessing if it brings further aid for Zelensky’s beleaguered Victory Plan.
Zelensky’s headline proposals include Ukrainian membership of Nato post ceasefire; permission to use long-range western weapons inside Russia; and the continuation of Ukraine’s military operations on Russian territory to avoid Ukrainian “buffer zones”.
Whilst Washington and London procrastinate and Brussels send mixed signals, this plan shows real long-term strategic planning by Ukraine – an art we have seemingly forgotten.
Nato membership for Kyiv has already been assured by its new Secretary General. Western long-range missiles hitting Russian military targets inside Russia is a perfectly legitimate military objective; Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles have repeatedly hit targets inside Crimea – Russian territory according to the Kremlin – so the precedent has already been set.
Ukrainian advances in Russia’s Kursk oblast meanwhile offer bargaining chips which could be exchanged for Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian “buffer zones”, whose continued occupation by Putin would merely lead to a frozen or protracted conflict in those areas in the long term, fuelling instability post-resolution.
That such a serious and long-term strategic vision has been largely overlooked across Western capitals reveals our own lack of clarity, ambition, and purpose. Instead of rallying around Ukraine, we are standing by as four combat brigades are ferried in from North Korea directly to the Ukrainian border via the trans-Siberian railroad.
North Korea has an army just under one million strong, and a ready reserve force of half a million more, with over 5,000 tanks and 10,000 artillery pieces. Its troops are poorly trained, badly equipped and borderline malnourished – and its tanks and artillery over half a century old and in disrepair – but nonetheless their sheer numbers can have a significant impact in the current war of attrition.
Zelensky’s veiled threat to acquire nuclear weapons as a final guarantee of Ukrainian security in the event he cannot achieve Nato membership is reasonable from his point of view. Ukraine needs to know that any ceasefire will be more than just a chance for Russia to recruit and rearm before renewing its assault.
We cannot match North Korean numbers – largely in part due to years of underfunding of our own manpower, tanks, and artillery. But what we can and must do is step up our strategic thinking and support Zelensky’s long-term vision for peace. This is no longer solely a matter for Ukraine and Europe: is a global issue, as the long journey of the North Korean reinforcements illustrates. The stakes have never been higher.
Robert Clark is a Defence Fellow at the Yorktown Institute in Washington DC. Prior to this he served in the British military