South Korean and Ukrainian officials have announced that there is a ‘high possibility’ that North Korean troops are to join Russian forces fighting Ukraine. The numbers remain unclear, as do the purpose and quality of the North Koreans. Nevertheless, Ukrainian sources indicate approximately 10,000 soldiers are preparing to join the Russians, and are already training with them, with a part of that force to be deployed to fight in the Kursk region by early November. Some suggest that, although the North Korean troops are billed as ‘special operations forces’, these are not ‘special forces’ in any Western sense, but nonetheless trained and reliable.

Moscow and Pyongyang – unsurprisingly – reject the suggestion as ‘fake news’. But Washington has confirmed there is evidence that there is a North Korean presence in Russia, but its purpose is unclear. Speaking in Rome, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters: ‘What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen.’ The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has stated that if North Korean forces joined the war effort in Ukraine, it would suggest that Russia is becoming ‘weaker’ and that it is an act of ‘desperation’ by Moscow.

It would certainly mark an incremental escalation both in the war in Ukraine and the wider global contest taking shape between the Euro-Atlantic community and its rivals in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The Euro-Atlantic community has pointed to North Korean support for Moscow since 2022. The US State Department has suggested that Pyongyang shipped at least 11,000 containers to Russia, mostly supplying munitions, including at least two million shells in summer 2024 alone. This acted as a bridging supply while Russia’s defence industry geared up for what has become a war characterised by attritional fighting, allowing Moscow’s armed forces to retain an artillery firepower advantage over Ukraine.

The partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang came into focus when Putin travelled to Pyongyang in June 2024 – his first visit there since 2000. During this visit, the two leaders, Putin and Kim Jong-un, signed a treaty on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Russia and North Korea. For Kim, this indicated a ‘new, high level of alliance’, a ‘future oriented’ ‘legal basis’ on which to fulfil ambitious plans in political, economic, military and cultural affairs.

Putin was (a little) more circumspect, noting that the treaty outlines ‘large-scale objectives and guidelines for deepening’  long-term links between the two countries, stating that it was ‘truly a breakthrough’ document. Though he stopped short of using the term ‘alliance’, he underlined Moscow’s help to North Korea against Japan in 1945 and support in the Korean War, and that he ‘highly appreciated’ Pyongyang’s ‘unwavering support’ for and ‘solidarity with’ Russia, both in the war against Ukraine and in ‘resisting’ the US and ‘its satellites’. The treaty refers to ‘mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties thereto’, a point which Moscow might use to justify any intervention of North Korean troops in Ukraine.

This meeting aroused a mix of concern and scepticism across the Euro-Atlantic community. Concern stemmed not only from Pyongyang’s support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine, but also possible Russian support for North Korea’s nuclear, missile and satellite programmes. The scepticism was due largely to it appearing to reflect Russian shortcomings in the war against Ukraine: weakened and isolated, Moscow needs all the friends it can find to sustain its war, even if these ‘friends’ are isolated authoritarian regimes. For some, the meeting was a sign of Moscow’s ‘desperation’, a ‘summit of pariahs’, and a ‘marriage of convenience between two weakened despotic powers’.

In Russia, the discussion was rather different in emphasis. On one hand, observers pointed to Moscow’s shifting position on international sanctions on Pyongyang, noting how Moscow had effectively immobilised the UN’s expert group on sanctions on North Korea, and would no longer allow new sanctions to be imposed through the UN.

On the other, if there was some Russian scepticism about the organisation of the summit, observers point to the wider context in which the meeting took place, both in terms of Kim’s visit to Russia in 2023 and the range of other meetings of senior officials. Certainly, military technical cooperation is part of the deal, but the delegation that accompanied Putin to Pyongyang indicated a wider agenda, including cooperation in energy, agriculture, transport and logistics. Putin himself noted this wider agenda in Pyongyang, pointing to significant recent increases in trade between the two states, the ‘strategically important project’ to upgrade the Khasan-Rajin railway, and the port infrastructure in Rajin.

There is, therefore, a bigger strategic picture to the Russian leadership’s development of relations with North Korea. It fits squarely into how Moscow sees the evolution of international affairs through the 2020s, including the shift of power away from the West towards the Asia-Pacific region, and how Moscow seeks to position Russia for a sustained global geoeconomic contest. It also reflects Moscow’s view of evolving global security challenges. Senior officials point, for instance, to concerns about how NATO seeks to ‘globalise its functions and spread its influence to other regions of the world’, including the implications of the ‘AUKUS initiative’ for the future of regional stability. It also includes Washington’s ‘interference’ on the Korean peninsula and support of Taiwan’s independence.

North Korean material support for the Russian armed forces in Ukraine is clearly important. Likewise, Moscow’s potential contribution to Pyongyang’s military-technical development, especially in any modernisation of North Korea’s large but ageing submarine fleet. The connected security implications in both Europe and the Pacific regions are clear, but there is more at stake: Moscow’s efforts to build a partnership with Pyongyang reflect a sustained, wider effort to position itself globally as a commodity champion, supplying strategically important goods, shaping transit corridors, and seeking access to new markets.