Are North Korean troops taking part in the Russian war in Ukraine?

The Russian army forms a unit of around 3,000 North Koreans, a Ukrainian military intelligence source told the BBC. The latest report suggested that Pyongyang is forming a close military alliance with the Kremlin.

So far, the BBC has seen no signs of such a large entity forming in the Russian Far East, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed reports of North Korean involvement.

“It’s not just British intelligence, it’s American intelligence too. They keep reporting on it, they don’t provide any evidence,” he said.

There is no doubt that Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their cooperation in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent Vladimir Putin a birthday message just last week, calling him his “closest comrade.”

Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of North Korea entering the war, and South Korea's defense minister said this month that the possibility of North Korea deploying to Ukraine was “very likely.”

The biggest question mark is the numbers involved.

A military source in the Russian Far East confirmed to BBC Russian that “a number of North Koreans had arrived” and were stationed at one of the military bases near Ussuriysk, north of Vladivostok. However, the source refused to give an exact number other than to say it was “absolutely nowhere near 3,000.”

Military experts have told us that they doubt that Russian army units can successfully integrate thousands of North Korean soldiers.

“Initially it wasn't even that easy to include hundreds of Russian prisoners – and all these people spoke Russian,” an analyst who is in Russia and asked not to be named told the BBC.

Even if there were 3,000 it wouldn't be large in the sense of a battlefield, but the US is just as concerned as Ukraine.

“It would represent a significant intensification of their relations,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, seeing it as “a new level of desperation from Russia” over battlefield losses.

Back in June, Vladimir Putin toasted a “peaceful and defensive” pact with Kim Jong Un.

And there is growing evidence that North Korea is supplying Russia with munitions, as demonstrated recently by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine's Poltava region.

In fact, reports of Pyongyang-supplied mines and grenades date back to December 2023 in Telegram chats involving Russian military communities.

Russian soldiers stationed in Ukraine have often complained about the quality of ammunition and the wounding of dozens of soldiers.

Kiev suspects that a unit of North Korean soldiers in the Ulan-Ude region near the Mongolian border is preparing for deployment in Russia's Kursk province, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August.

“They could guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, freeing up Russian units to fight elsewhere,” said Valeriy Ryabykh, editor of the Ukrainian publication Defense Express.

“I would rule out the possibility of these units appearing at the front immediately.”

Ryabakh is not alone in this thought.

Although North Korea has about 1.28 million active soldiers, its army, unlike the Russian military, has no recent combat experience.

Pyongyang has adopted the old Soviet model for its armed forces, but it is unclear how its main force of motorized infantry units might fit into the war in Ukraine.

Added to this is the obvious language barrier and unfamiliarity with Russian systems, which would make any combat roles difficult.

That doesn't rule out the North Korean military's participation in Russia's all-out war in Ukraine, but it is recognized by experts primarily for its engineering and construction capabilities, not its combat operations.

What they both have are common incentives.

Pyongyang needs money and technology, Moscow needs soldiers and ammunition.

“Pyongyang would be well paid and perhaps have access to Russian military technology that Moscow would otherwise have been reluctant to transfer to North Korea,” said Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group.

“It would also give their soldiers real combat experience, but it also risks exposing North Koreans to life in the West, where it is much more prosperous.”

For Putin, there is an urgent need to make up for the significant losses from more than two and a half years of war.

Valeriy Akimenko of the British Research Center for Conflict Studies believes that deploying North Koreans would help the Russian leader deal with the failures of the previous round of mandatory mobilization.

“So he thinks, what a brilliant idea, while the Russian ranks are being thinned by Ukraine – why not let the North Koreans do some of the fighting?”

President Zelensky is clearly concerned about how this hostile alliance might develop.

There were no Western troops on site in Ukraine for fear of escalation.

However, if reports of hundreds of North Koreans preparing to deploy are confirmed, the idea of ​​foreign troops being on the ground in this war appears to be less worrying for Vladimir Putin.

Additional reporting by Paul Kirby, Kelly Ng and Nick Marsh.