Tag: Russia

This is a nice troll response by the Ukraine Defense Ministry to news that the Russians are buying munitions from the North Koreans:

Russia has been forced to buy military hardware from North Korea as sanctions squeeze Moscow’s ability to supply its military, the US says.

A US official revealed Moscow is the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from Pyongyang for use in Ukraine.

And they said that Russia could be forced to buy additional North Korean weaponry as the war dragged on. 

Buying from North Korea is a sign of “severe supply shortages”, they added.

The intelligence was first reported by the New York Times. Ukraine’s defence ministry tweeted a mocking response to the report, saying that it showed “Soviet weapons” had “exhausted their potential”.

The ministry said the while Ukraine was switching to Nato standards, Russia was heading in the direction of North Korean standards – be it in the field of “weapons, politics or standard of living”.

BBC

You can read more at the link.

The Russians are trying to flex their muscles in the East Sea:

Two Russian Tu-95 bombers flew through Korea’s air defense identification zone (Kadiz) Tuesday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  
   
The JCS confirmed that the planes entered the Kadiz after the Russian Ministry of Defense warned they would.  
   
“Two strategic missile carriers for long-range aviation performed a scheduled flight in the airspace over the neutral waters of the Sea of Japan,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to the East Sea. “The flight duration was about seven hours. At certain stages during the route, the strategic missile carriers were escorted by F-16 fighters of the Republic of Korea air force.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I do not see this many Soldiers being sent to fight in Ukraine by North Korea, but it appears that the Russian propaganda apparatus is trying to will this into existence:

Korotchenko does not cite the source for his claim, which he made in a Thursday, August 4 broadcast, and there does not appear to be any public announcement by Moscow or Pyongyang to support it.

While some Russian outlets have repeated his claims after they were picked up by national and international news outlets, the only earlier mention of such “offer” and the “100,000” figure appears on report by the Russian news agency REGNUM, which the EU has accused of spreading “aggressive and biased propagandist narratives against Ukraine, and to promote a positive attitude to the annexation of Crimea and the actions of separatists in Donbas.”

The article, dated August 2, cites a Russian MP, who referenced North Korea’s “offer” to help in a speech in the Duma.

Newsweek

You can read more at the link, but North Korea has not publicly commented on any of these claims. North Korea definitely has the manpower, but this could be a huge embarrassment for the Kim regime if the Soldiers do not perform well or even worse start defecting. The Russian army has already lost massive prestige by being smacked around by an inferior Ukrainian military.

Part of Kim Jong-un’s deterrence strategy is the prestige of having a massive military that provides a legitimate threat to South Korea. Losing in Ukraine and having a bunch of Soldiers defect takes away from that deterrence factor.

It looks like the Putin regime is looking for some cheap near slave labor to rebuild the areas they destroyed and occupied in Ukraine:

North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang – a move that would pose a challenge to international sanctions against the North’s nuclear weapons programme.

According to NK News, a Seoul-based website, ambassador Alexander Matsegora said North Korean workers could help rebuild the war-shattered infrastructure in the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. (……..)

He told the Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview, according to NK News, that “highly qualified and hard-working Korean builders, who are capable of working in the most difficult conditions, could help us restore our social, infrastructure and industrial facilities”.

The Guardian

You can read more at the link, but Russia has a long history of using North Korean near slave laborers which is also a lucrative money making enterprise for the Kim regime.

The Chinese and Russians are apparently trying to show the ROK how united they are after President Biden’s trip to Korea and Japan:

“Prior to their entry into the KADIZ, our military deployed Air Force fighters to conduct tactical steps in preparation against potential accidental situations,” the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.

At 7:56 a.m., two Chinese H-6 bombers entered the KADIZ from an area 126 kilometers northwest of Ieodo, a submerged rock south of the southern island of Jeju, according to the JCS. They moved toward the East Sea and exited the zone at around 9:33 a.m.

Later, the two Chinese warplanes joined four Russian warplanes, including two TU-95 bombers, and entered the KADIZ together at 9:58 a.m. They then left the zone at 10:15 a.m.

At around 3:40 p.m., four Chinese and two Russian military aircraft were spotted flying in an area some 267 km southeast of Ieodo — outside the KADIZ — the JCS said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The ADIZ incursions happened reportedly last month before North Korea’s ICBM test:

Russian and Chinese military aircraft entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ) without prior notice last month ahead of North Korea’s long-range missile launch, a Seoul official said Tuesday.

Two Russian planes flew into the KADIZ on March 24, prompting South Korea’s military to scramble its fighters to prevent their approach to the country’s airspace, according to the official.

The incident came just hours before Pyongyang test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the East Sea — a launch that ended its yearslong moratorium on nuclear and ICBM testing.

The Russian warplanes flew in the KADIZ northwest of South Korea’s Ulleung Island in the East Sea at around 11 a.m. and moved out of it 30 minutes later.

A day earlier, a Chinese military plane also entered the KADIZ near Ieo Islet, a submerged rock south of South Korea’s southern resort island of Jeju. The official said the area was where the air defense identification zones of South Korea and China overlapped.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but China has been claiming Ieodo as their territory and have been flying bombers over it in response for years. The Russians have often had Korean ADIZ incursions and even actively violated Korean airspace over Dokdo before that led to warning shots from the ROK Air Force.

In North Korea they have no issue with arbitrarily killing people so of course they would support Russia doing the same thing against Ukrainians:

North Korea on Saturday condemned the United States for making the crisis surrounding Ukraine a human rights issue and imposing sanctions against Russia, denouncing U.S. President Joe Biden as “an old man in his senility” and a man of a “repeated slip of tongue.”

A commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the Ukraine issue has suddenly become a human rights issue, as the U.S. and western media branded the case as a war crime, with a politically motivated plot to defame Russia and to achieve the collapse of its regime.

“The latest story is the U.S. chief executive who spoke ill of the Russian president with groundless data,” the English-language article read. “Such reckless remarks can be made only by the descendants of Yankees, master hand at aggression and plot-breeding.”

The North then called Biden “an old man in his senility” with “a problem in his intellectual faculty,” and “the president known for his repeated slip of tongue,” though it stopped short of putting Biden’s name in the article.

“A big question is if he could ever have done anything right with such IQ during his florid 50-year political career,” according to the commentary.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Russians are moving equipment from the Kamchatka peninsula and Kuril Islands over to to mainland to be transported over to the fight in Ukraine:

Emanual was there to see off a 38-ton shipment of nonlethal military supplies, including helmets and bulletproof vests, that Japan donated to Ukraine. 

Japan has reported spotting numerous Russia warships on the move in international waters near its northern borders this month.

Most recently, four Russian amphibious ships, traveling in pairs, were spotted east-northeast of Japan’s main island of Honshu on March 15 and 16, Japan’s Joint Staff said in a news release last week.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but Putin must be getting desperate if he is having to move equipment from the far reaches of Russia to fight the Ukrainians. Notice that the picture shows a ship filled with transport trucks. Shortages of trucks to move supplies into Ukraine has been something reported in the media that Russia has been lacking to sustain offensive operations.

This would be an interesting legal opinion to get on whether the Japanese pacifist constitution would allow them to conduct an offensive operation to reclaim land that was originally Japanese which is the case of the Kuril Islands. I doubt the Japanese would ever do such a thing though considering Russia’s nuclear arsenal:

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Thursday during a House of Councillors committee session that the northern territories are being “occupied illegally by Russia.”

The government had avoided using such an expression to promote negotiations for a peace treaty that would address the northern territories issue, but has now changed its stance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the Foreign Ministry, this is the first time a Japanese prime minister in the Diet has referred to an “illegal occupation” regarding the northern territories since 2009, when then Prime Minister Taro Aso used the expression. At that time, Russia criticized its use, saying it was an attempt to challenge Russia’s sovereignty.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.