Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
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.