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Ukraine says North Korea is sending soldiers to help Russia in the war

Updated October 16, 202410:03 AM ET 

Heard on Morning Edition

Joanna Kakissis

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un (right), and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands after a welcoming ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 19.

Gavril Grigorov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government says its military intelligence has evidence that North Korea isn’t just sending weapons to assist Russia in the war on Ukraine. Pyongyang may also be sending soldiers.

“This is no longer just about transferring weapons,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address over the weekend. “It’s about actually transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.”

Andriy Kovalenko, who leads the center for countering disinformation on Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council, told NPR that he was briefed on the issue and said Russia is training North Korean military personnel on Russian territory.

“The enemy’s plans are to use [the North Korean presence] to reinforce conscripts and border guards in the border regions of Russia,” he said. “But it’s too early to say whether they will be deployed directly on the territory of Ukraine.”

White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said in a statement that the Biden administration is concerned about reports of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia. If true, he said, it "would mark a significant increase" in the two countries' defense relationship and would "indicate a new level of desperation for Russia as it continues to suffer significant casualties on the battlefield in its brutal war against Ukraine."

The South Korean Defense Ministry says it’s closely monitoring for signs of these troop deployments.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, calls the Ukrainian claim an “information hoax.”

North Korea and Russia have signed a strategic agreement that serves as a military alliance. South Korean Defense Minister Shin Wonsik told Bloomberg this summer that Pyongyang has been sending Russia millions of artillery shells.

There’s also evidence that North Korea is making missiles to order for Russia and that those missiles are being used to attack Ukraine.

Investigators from Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based investigative organization tracking the supply of weapons and ammunition in armed conflicts, discovered the remnants of four North Korean-manufactured Hwasong-11 ballistic missiles in Ukraine.

“This illustrates two things,” says Damien Spleeters, who leads CAR’s investigations in Ukraine. “The first thing is that there wasn’t just a one-off transfer of missiles in late 2023. We see that there’s at least been another transfer in 2024. So it’s an ongoing type of relationship. The second thing is that there’s a very tight window between production, transfer and use.”

He said the missile component found was made around March of this year and used a few months later, in August.

Ukraine says North Korean military engineers have been sent to Russia or even occupied territories to check how well these missiles are launching. Spleeters doesn’t rule that out.

“It would make sense for people involved in the production of those missiles to be close to where they are being used and assess how effective they are, in order to make improvements to those missiles,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kovalenko of Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council said the presence of North Korean troops in Russia “is already a complete change of balance” in a war where NATO says it has not put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“Also,” he added, “autocrats make weapons cheaper and faster.”

Zelenskyy told Ukraine’s Parliament on Wednesday that North Korea is also sending factory workers to Russia to replace those conscripted to fight in Ukraine.

Speaking to lawmakers about his plan to end the war on Ukraine’s terms, the president said he hopes Ukraine's allies will change their strategy to help the country prevail. One of the conditions in his plan is that Ukraine be invited to join NATO before the war ends, something many Western allies, including the United States, are reluctant to do in order to avoid angering Russia.