Via NBC News: Kim Jong Un to send Putin 12,000 soldiers, South Korea says; U.S. warns they’ll be ‘fair game’.
Pyongyang is expected to augment Russia’s military with its own sizable contingent of special forces, military engineers and artillery troops, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun reported to lawmakers Thursday, his office told NBC News. The total number is expected to reach 12,000, he said, with 3,000 having been deployed already.
That matches Washington’s assessment.
“They’re fair game,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday, saying the U.S. believes at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers have already arrived in eastern Russia by sea. The soldiers moved this month and are being trained at multiple Russian military bases, Kirby said.
“They’re fair targets, and the Ukrainian military will defend themselves against North Korean soldiers the same way they’re defending themselves against Russian soldiers,” he said. “There could be dead and wounded North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine.”
Additionally,
The U.S. and other countries say North Korea has already provided critical munitions, including millions of artillery shells, to Russia in possible exchange for key military technology that Pyongyang could use to advance its nuclear ambitions. Both countries deny the arms transfer.
And,
For more than two years, South Korea has provided only nonlethal assistance to Ukraine, but Yoon said Wednesday that Seoul will now consider providing Kyiv with both defensive and offensive weapons.
I don’t have a lot to add to this, save to note that it does feel like both an act of desperation on Russia’s part and that it is also escalatory to introduce troops from another country into the mix (which seem to, in turn have the potential to affect South Korean behavior). One thing is for certain, it is yet another example of Putin’s initial miscalculation as it pertains to the original invasion.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians clearly have a stake in the American election, given that Trump has clearly been signaling he will come on the side of Russia, at least in terms of a settlement over already stolen Ukrainian territory. And then we get things like this:
I am going to agree (kind of) that there is a terribly simplistic tendency in the US of reducing wars to cartoonish good v. bad guy narratives. But let’s not forget that the Russians invaded and are solely responsible for this war. And yes Vance gently notes that the Russians shouldn’t have invaded (in way that sounds like Timmy shouldn’t have been playing ball in the house), but what he is doing is saying sure, the thief shouldn’t have broken into your house and then squated in the living room, but can’t we just get along now and be roomies?
It is really important to note that Russia has violated a major norm of the post-WWII era, which is that wars of territorial acquisition are not acceptable. Indeed, they have been at for a while, but this was an especially brazen action. There are good reasons to want that behavior punished.
