Today, there is interesting news from the Kursk front, Russia.
Here, North Korea took a significant step, sending thousands more soldiers to the Russian frontlines as the two nations are increasing their military cooperation, exchanging valuable information and tactics with each other. This relationship provoked a direct response from the US, as it intensified cooperation with Ukraine to undermine the North Korean tactics.
Recently, North Korea sent 3,000 more troops to Kursk to replenish depleted Russian and North Korean ranks. However, Ukrainian reports indicate that North Korea had already lost over 4,000 soldiers of their initial contingent of 12,000, meaning that the new reinforcements didn’t even replenish the losses they suffered.
Beyond just soldiers, North Korea is increasing military aid to Russia, filling gaps left by Russia’s struggling defense industry not being able to keep up with the sustained losses.
Recently, Ukrainian reconnaissance also spotted North Korean Koksan self-propelled guns in Kursk, passing its coordinates to nearby HIMARS crews, which destroyed the guns and crews with cluster munition strikes. Ukrainians also detected another Koksan system in Donetsk, destroying it with a drone-dropped grenade. The same type of North Korean self-propelled artillery systems was later also seen being moved through Crimea, showing that Russian dependence on such equipment now extends across the entire frontline.
Notably, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council and former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently visited the North Korean capital of Pyongyang for the second time in six months, signaling a progressively deeper level of cooperation and likely more troop and equipment transfers. For North Korea, the war offers a rare chance to gain combat experience and refine its military doctrine, forming a serious threat to South Korean national security amid ongoing tensions on the peninsula.
These growing military ties are invoking a direct response from the West, as the Russians are allowing North Korea to increasingly prepare for a future modern war.
In response, the US military urgently partnered with the South Korean military to develop and hone military plans and tactics to counter new North Korean tactics. The US and South Korea launched joint exercises focused on countering war tunnels, an extensively used North Korean tactic, which is also being modernized and used by both sides fighting in Ukraine.
The drills include drone reconnaissance, ground assaults on tunnel entrances, and clearing enemy forces inside. While war tunnels continue to be the most challenging threat to counter for any modern military, the enhanced effort of the US and South Korea to counter these tunnels will significantly weaken North Korean military potential. As the upside of new military experience is heavily weighed down by the prospect of their main defensive tactic being defeated, North Korea must seriously reassess if deepening military ties with Russia is worth the threat of increased Western efforts.
At the same time, NATO seeks to learn its own lessons from the war in Ukraine, to counter any future Russian and North Korean threat. This led to new initiatives, such as the Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre in Bydgoszcz in Poland, which brings together NATO and Ukrainian personnel to study up-to-date combat experiences and insights, thereby sharpening NATO’s defense planning.
Incorporating these hard-learned Ukrainian experiences into NATO doctrine now, ensures that the alliance and all its members will be ready to counter any future Russian and North Korean threat, as Ukraine actively works on new ways to counter these exact Russian and North Korean tactics.
Overall, while Pyongyang’s military aid and combat deployments offer Russia some relief amidst mounting losses, this also exposes Russia’s increasing dependence on foreign support and the insufficiencies of the Russian defense industrial base, despite the already increased production. The threat of growing military ties between Russia and North Korea is also not going unanswered by the geopolitical West.
Increased efforts to incorporate crucial military and combat experiences into NATO doctrine and joint exercises that specifically aim to counter Russian and North Korean tactics will greatly improve the deterrence factor of the West. Besides strengthening against a possible war with Russia, the response from the US and NATO means that North Korean leadership must decide if updating its military tactics is worth their efforts being increasingly focused on by their greatest enemies.
In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
