North Korea doubles down on its alliance with Russia, for now — SkimNews
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- Zelenskyy revealed in a late July address that Russia is preparing to bring 30,000 additional North Korean troops into Russia's Voronezh region, with preparations underway since June; the claim has not been independently confirmed.
- Ukraine's military intelligence said on August 6 that a ~90-person North Korean missile unit is deploying to western Russia, equipped with up to 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers, with the United States aware of the deployment.
- Russia has already received 40 North Korean missiles, at least two of which were launched at Ukraine in a deadly recent strike, per the Ukrainian official.
- North Korea previously sent 12,000–16,000 troops to help Russia push back Ukraine's Kursk incursion and in April opened a "Memorial Museum of Combat Feats for Overseas Military Operations" honoring ~2,288 soldiers killed there.
- North Korean workers numbering in the tens of thousands are filling severe labor shortages across Russian civilian factories and military-adjacent industries, according to expert Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University.
- South Korea's Institute for National Security Strategy estimates North Korea earned up to $14.4 billion from Russia between August 2023 and the end of 2025 — dwarfing the official 2023 trade figure of just $35 million and reflecting massive sanctions evasion.
- Zelenskyy is pressing South Korea to lift restrictions on selling air defense systems directly to Ukraine, telling Ukrainian media on August 8 that Ukraine is "open" to closer cooperation.
Why it matters: Kim Jong Un has insulated his regime against any outcome in Ukraine by keeping China — which accounts for over 98% of North Korea's official foreign trade — as a stable backstop while extracting up to $14.4 billion in unofficial earnings from Russia; analysts told the source the Kim regime would likely survive even a Russian political defeat, meaning Western sanctions enforcement is being routed around more effectively than headline trade statistics suggest.
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