'Vast majority of North Korean troops will become cannon fodder': analyst

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00:00Let's get the analysis.

00:01Standing by for us is Samuel Rahmani of the Royal United Services Institute.

00:04Samuel, always a pleasure to have you on France 24.

00:07So it seems at this point it's entered Kim Jong-un into the Ukraine war.

00:12What does this move by North Korea sending troops to Kursk?

00:16What kind of possibilities does it open up for the next stages?

00:18Well, I don't know how much of an impact North Korea's troops are actually going to have

00:23on the frontline conditions.

00:24We consider the sheer rate of attrition and the high level of casualties that the Russians

00:28have lost in Ukraine.

00:29Even if there are 12,000 North Korean troops that are being dispatched to the front lines,

00:34it's important to keep in mind that the Wagner group lost 21,000 forces in Baku in a matter

00:39of months.

00:41So I don't know how long these North Korean troops are necessarily going to last on the

00:44battlefield, but they certainly add additional manpower to Russia's defense at Kursk at a

00:48time when they're trying to press their advantage on three key areas of the Ukrainian front

00:52line.

00:53And they don't want to divert forces from Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, or from Kharkiv.

00:58What does this tell us then this latest time with North Korea about the state of play then

01:02for Putin and for Russia?

01:03Well, I think that this is a strategic move from Vladimir Putin.

01:08I don't think it's necessarily a move that's motivated purely by desperation.

01:12I think it's aimed at making sure that Russia can press its advantage offensively with enough

01:16manpower where it needs, avoid a larger draft of Russians, and bring foreign fighters onto

01:24the front lines to plug holes in the front lines.

01:26And this is something that the Russians have been trying to do from the very beginning

01:29of the war.

01:30They reached out to the Assad regime, tried to get Syrians on board.

01:33They reportedly tried to reach out to half-drive forces to get Libyans on board.

01:36They've been recruiting mercenaries from Central Asia and Africa.

01:41But now they finally got one country that was willing to actually deploy large numbers of

01:46its own troops.

01:47And this is helpful for Putin's war.

01:50It sounds like what you're saying, that these North Koreans will just be sent into what's

01:54being referred to as, and it's a horrible phrase, the meat grinder, basically going

01:58to the front as cannon fodder.

02:00Well, I think that that's what the large majority of them are going to end up doing.

02:04I think that not all of them, though.

02:06I think that there's going to be some North Korean technical advisers who are going to

02:09be helping the Russians use their weaponry.

02:11In some parts of the front line, there was a recent report that half of the shells that

02:14Russia are using originated from North Korea.

02:17Many of the shells blew up in the air when they first arrived.

02:20People have attributed that to product defects, but that may also be because the Russians

02:24aren't used to necessarily using the level of equipment or are unclear how interoperable

02:29some of the equipment that the North Koreans are giving them, like Wazir-11 missiles are,

02:34with the Iranian drones.

02:35So some North Koreans will certainly be kept aside in special forces as engineers.

02:40They will avoid perishing.

02:42There's embassy staff on the ground that will help them learn Russian and integrate

02:45with the Russian forces, but the vast majority, I think, will end up becoming cannon fodder

02:50or meat grinder, as you said.

02:52Indeed.

02:53And that is an extremely sobering thought.

02:56One wonders what this means now for Ukraine, because Zelensky is calling for more resources,

03:03but also he's going to renew that plea, isn't he, to be allowed to use the weaponry supplied

03:09by the West beyond Ukraine's borders.

03:12Is this one of the reasons that might play into that equation to say, yes, OK, go ahead

03:17and do that?

03:18Well, I think the arrival of North Korean forces is certainly going to harden the U.S.'s

03:24calculus, especially because there have been some Russian sources, including one who spoke

03:28to the Washington Post, who was an ex-Kremlin insider, who said that Russia's deployment

03:32of North Korean forces are precisely a retaliation for the U.S. and other Western powers greenlighting

03:38Ukraine to strike across the borders into Russian territory.

03:43So if that is really what is motivating Russia's deployment of North Korean forces as well,

03:48peak in rage at what the U.S. native allies have done by enabling Ukraine to strike in

03:54and by enabling Ukraine to carry out the Kursk offensive, then I think the West will respond

03:59in kind and allow the Ukrainians to deepen strikes onto training centers and maybe areas

04:06where the North Koreans are operating inside Russia and certainly use NATO-class weaponry

04:11indiscriminately across the broader established front lines.

04:15Samuel, thank you very much for joining us here on France 24.

04:17Samuel Romani, Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

04:21We're watching for all developments in Ukraine on the ground and diplomatically.

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