The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has, for the first time, sent combatant units abroad, to aid Russia in the war in Ukraine. As noted in the Joint Statement on the DPRK’s Deployment of Troops to Russia this development indelibly connects the Indo-Pacific and European theaters,

The deployment of North Korean troops to Russia was initiated by Pyongyang, not Moscow, according to U.S. officials. The initiative was swiftly approved by Vladimir Putin, as reported by The New York Times,

While some Western officials initially viewed the arrival of North Korean soldiers in Russia as evidence of the Kremlin’s desperation, U.S. agencies now reportedly believe the idea was North Korea’s initiative,

Secretive North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but unlike in Russia, the Korean People's Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat. Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness,” says Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The Russian army went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with around 2,000 tracked howitzers. In 34 months of brutal combat, the army has lost no fewer than 800 of these self-propelled artillery pieces to Ukrainian action. Hundreds more have been sidelined by a shortage of fresh gun barrels.

After two years of intense courtship, progressing from warm words to vital weapons, summits in Pyongyang to 11,000 soldiers on the ground in Russia, the burgeoning relationship between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un was signed in blood this week when the first stories emerged of North Korean casualties on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that 3,000 North Korean troops have been killed and wounded in the fighting in the Kursk region. It marked the first