Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rubbished reports that North Korea will soon send engineers to Donbass, which were first introduced by South Korea’s TV Chosun in a so-called “exclusive report” citing unnamed government officials and then laundered by the US-based “Institute for the Study of War”. When asked about this, he simply replied “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, which is sensible enough since Russia doesn’t need foreign engineering experience to rebuild that new region.
The Russian-North Korean mutual defense pact that was clinched in mid-June, which reaffirmed the relevance of the associated clause from their landmark 1961 agreement, was a geopolitical game-changer in the New Cold War for the reasons that were explained here. In brief, it could lead to North Korea opening up a hot East Asian front of this global competition if the US crosses Russia’s red lines in Eastern Europe, thus possibly getting America to think twice about upping the ante in their proxy war.
This development prompted a lot of media attention across the world, including wild speculation that North Korea will soon dispatch troops to fight alongside Russia’s in the special operation zone, but Russia has more than enough personnel and volunteers to not have to rely on its new ally for such support. The subtext of those aforesaid reports is that Russia might be lying about its losses, is struggling to hold the front line, and might therefore be so desperate that it’s becoming dependent on North Korean troops.
Likewise, those who scoff at such claims but lend credence to the related ones about Russia supposedly recruiting that country’s engineers are misled to believe that Russia doesn’t have enough of those anymore either, which conforms to the overarching narrative of it lying about its losses. As “Simplicius The Thinker” detailed here in early June, the data that President Putin shared during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum suggests that his country’s losses might be around 100,000 or so.
The Russian Ministry of Defense hasn’t confirmed that number and actually hasn’t shared any update on this for quite some time, but even if it’s relatively accurate, then that by no means suggests that Russia is running out of either troops or engineers. Furthermore, if there was any truth to the innuendo contained in the previously mentioned information warfare narratives related to this fake news story about North Korea, then one would expect Russia to have experienced some setbacks along the front by now.
To the contrary, it continues gradually gaining ground in some sectors or at least holding its own in others, thus throwing cold water on the notion that it’s so desperate for troops and engineers that it’s now about to become dependent on North Korean ones in order to avoid a catastrophic collapse. Nevertheless, even if the rumors eventually turn out to be true (even if only in part), then that wouldn’t automatically mean that Russia was lying about its losses.
For instance, the Russian engineers who are helping to reconstruct Donbass could be redeployed elsewhere along the front, perhaps ahead of an impending offensive or to prepare for a potential military breakthrough. To be sure, Russia presumably already has enough engineers and troops that it wouldn’t have to rely on North Koreans in any case, but the decision might still be made for reasons that only the Ministry of Defense could explain if they choose to do so.
All told, Peskov’s surprised reaction in response to these reports seems sincere, and there’s no credible reason to suspect that there’s any truth to them. Rather, it looks as though South Korea wanted to fearmonger about North Korea after its (technically revived) mutual defense pact with Russia, possibly to justify a preplanned decision to arm Ukraine or at least move the policymaking needle in that direction. In other words, it’s nothing but information warfare, though it did manage to fool quite a few folks.
