Opinion | North Korea’s support for Russia won’t be a game changer in Ukraine

It won’t be long before the world finds out if Ukrainian officials were right in saying on Monday that their forces had fired at North Korean soldiers

in combat for the first time since they were deployed by Russia to its western Kursk region. Despite denials from Pyongyang, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said on October 31 that as many as 8,000

North Korean troops were in Russia and expected to enter combat.

Are North Korean troops a game changer in the grinding Russo-Ukrainian conflict? I think not. Russia has already gained the upper hand on the battlefield against the Ukrainians, who are weary, short of ammunition

and outnumbered. So while a dispatch of North Korean troops may be useful, its significance would primarily be political.

Besides, such added strength from Pyongyang would not help Moscow claim a quick victory. It would, however, most certainly make the United States and Europe more determined to provide extra aid to Ukraine, which has been asking for heavy attack weapons to strike deeper into Russia.

On the European battlefield, the only beneficiary, it seems, is North Korea, a latecomer. First, the unprecedented public relations effort of sending its soldiers to faraway Europe is guaranteed to attract global attention. Isolated and sanctioned, North Korea sees itself

as a nuclear power – what it wants most is to be treated as a nuclearised “normal” country. For that to happen, it needs to get the world to sit up so it can attempt to break international sanctions.

Second, North Korea can benefit from much-needed supplies of food, fuel and other material from Russia even as its soldiers gain their first combat experience since the Korean war. The Korean People’s Army, 1.28 million strong, can find out how effective their munitions and short-range ballistic missiles are on a battlefield. They will learn how to deal with drones and counter-attacks. North Korean soldiers will be combat-hardened.