Putin Has Activated the Bat Signal: North Korean Reinforcements Against Ukraine
The war has now entered a critical new phase that threatens to escalate into a larger, more globally destabilizing conflict.
In 1939, before executing an invasion of Poland, thereby ensuring a second world war, Adolf Hitler wanted to guarantee German soldiers attacking from the west would not encounter aggression from the Soviet Union in the east. While wishing to remain out of the increasing tension long enough to bolster his military, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler, promising Soviet forces would not interfere with Germany’s plan.
Two years later, Stalin learned an agreement with the German dictator was about as good as a handshake with fingers crossed behind Hitler’s back when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in violation of the pact.
Here we are, eight decades later, shadows of another world war looming as Europe is closer to war than it has ever been since 1945 and fascist ideology threatens democracy’s future at home and abroad. This time, though, it’s Russia reaching out to other authoritarian regimes for help in its now two-year onslaught of Europe’s largest democracy, Ukraine.
In June, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was in North Korea for talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that culminated in both men signing a “defensive” pact requiring each country come to each’s aid if either is attacked.
Could this “defensive pact” be this generation’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
It appears as though in his desperation, after Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region this summer, Vladimir Putin is activating the bat signal.
The war has now entered a critical new phase that threatens to escalate into a larger, more globally destabilizing conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained in a recent video address:
This is no longer just about transferring weapons. It’s about actually transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.
Andriy Kovalenko, Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council lead on countering disinformation, explained:
The enemy’s plans are to use [the North Korean presence] to reinforce conscripts and border guards in the border regions of Russia. But it’s too early to say whether they will be deployed directly on the territory of Ukraine.
The United States and South Korea have confirmed North Korea is dispatching possibly thousands of soldiers.
As The Independent reported:
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said Pyongyang has sent around 3,000 troops — including special forces — to Russia’s far east for military training and acclimatising at the bases there, in what could be readiness for combat in the war.
The troops have been supplied with Russian military uniforms, weapons and false identification documents ahead of their deployment for combat, the NIS said.
The Ukrainian intelligence agency is reporting training exercises underway on five military bases in Russia with around 12,000 North Korean troops, including 500 officers and three generals.
Zelenskyy told reporters, “I believe they sent officers first to assess the situation before deploying troops.”
According to the White House, the United States determined North Korean soldiers were transported earlier this month from North Korea’s Wonsan region by ship to Russian city Vladivostok before being assigned to three eastern-Russian military training sites.
White House spokesperson John Kirby stated:
If they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game. 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.
President Zelenskyy added, “This is a clear step in Russia’s escalation that matters.”
Evidence also suggests North Korea is manufacturing missiles for Russia. Damien Spleeters, investigator with the U.K.-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research that tracks weapon ammunition supplies in armed conflicts, explained:
This illustrates two things. The first thing is that there wasn’t just a one-off transfer of missiles in late 2023. We see that there’s at least been another transfer in 2024. So it’s an ongoing type of relationship. The second thing is that there’s a very tight window between production, transfer and use.
He added:
It would make sense for people involved in the production of those missiles to be close to where they are being used and assess how effective they are, in order to make improvements to those missiles.
Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met last fall with Kim Jong Un to express North Korea’s “steadfast will” to expand Russian ties.
Around the same time, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Putin to ostensibly discuss trade at a time when there is growing concern China may invade Taiwan. Like Putin’s claim Ukraine is really historically part of Russia and not a separate country, Xi claims the island democracy of Taiwan is really part of mainland China and should be “united by force” if necessary. He’s already asserted he is prepared to go to war with western powers over it.
In June, at a commemoration ceremony for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, as President Joe Biden warned of the precarity of the present moment, Vladimir Putin threatened to send long-range missiles to his allies that could be used against nations supplying Ukraine.
The main thing preventing Xi from going ahead with it is international condemnation of Russia. If Ukraine’s western allies take their eyes off Ukraine’s fight for survival, it will provide Xi and other dictators permission to follow suit with their own invasions. If we just stay out of it, as many insist we ought to do, it will be emboldening autocrats all over the world at a time when more democracies are backsliding toward authoritarian regimes.
As Biden asserted:
The autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked. We cannot let that happen. To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable.
What democratic governments, particularly those in Europe, understand is that allowing Russia to run roughshod over Ukraine would give Putin a green light to march into any other country he wants. If Western allies abandon Ukraine, why shouldn’t they also abandon other European democracies under the guise of “peace”?
Supporting Ukraine is preventing world war three.
Historian and author of On Tyranny, Prof. Timothy Snyder explained in a recent Guardian piece titled, “We’re in 1938 now: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history”:
If Ukrainians give up, or if we give up on Ukraine…It’s Russia making war in the future. It’s Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers from a different geographical position. At that point, we’re in 1939. We’re in 1938 now. In effect, what Ukrainians are letting us do is extend 1938.
In April, President Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid bill. $61 billion of it went to aid Ukraine.
To get a sense of how consequential this is, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and head of the United Russia party, Dmitry Medvedev, is hoping for another civil war that “would finally lead to the inglorious break up of the 21st Century’s evil empire, the United States of America”.
He added on Telegram:
I cannot with all sincerity not wish the United States to plunge into a new civil war as quickly as possible.
Putin, Kim, Xi, and other present and aspiring despots want Western democracies to fall, and they’re lining up hoping this fall’s US election goes the way they want with the election of a fellow autocrat — the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.
This wouldn’t be so dire a concern if there wasn’t an entire faction of sitting republican US Congressmen and women actively working to help make it a reality.
In February, a former FBI informant republicans held up as a witness in their quixotic mission to impeach President Biden turned out to be a Russian mole. Alexander Smirnov, the Oversight Committee’s “star witness,” lied to the FBI when he alleged Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each. Donald Trump appointed the federal prosecutor who debunked this claim.
Under marching orders straight out of the Kremlin, 46 House republicans voted earlier this month to defund NATO.
Georgia Rep. (and MAGA darling) Marjorie Taylor Greene could have been reading a script ripped right from Vladimir Putin’s Ministry of Propaganda when she spouted:
As long as we remain a member of NATO, the United States will continue to function as the military ATM of European countries at the expense of our own citizens, putting our own national security and our economy at risk.
But the fear of NATO encroaching closer to Russia’s borders is a ruse. While that has been a convenient defense of Russia’s aggression against its neighbors, Vladimir Putin himself has admitted his objectives are to re-unify the kingdom of Peter the Great.
As the BBC reported two years ago at the start of the invasion:
When Russia invaded its neighbour on 24 February, Putin falsely claimed it was a “special operation” limited to the eastern Donbas region to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and reduce the supposed threat to Russia.
But even as he was uttering those words, his troops were moving on Kyiv and bombing land even further west. More than 100 days later, a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under Russian military control, with puppet administrations who talk of referenda on joining Russia.
And now Putin feels bold enough to admit that his “operation” is in fact an occupation.
Putin claims Ukraine rightfully belongs to him and “there would be no peace until Russia achieves its goals”.
The American republican party wants nothing more than to leave Ukraine twisting in the wind, as it demonstrated in December when GOP lawmakers met for a closed-door two-day Heritage Foundation-funded summit with Hungary’s hard-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, a staunch opponent of Ukraine aid.
While there are progressive voices calling for “a negotiated peace,” other nations’ autocrats are watching how the United States reacts to Putin.
Now that North Korea is all in, things just got more real.