Donald Rumsfeld, then US Secretary of Defense, famously said of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction at a Department of Defense (DoD) press briefing in February 2002:

“They are known known. These are things we know we know. They are known unknowns. I mean there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things that we don’t know, that we don’t know.”

That pretty much sums up our understanding of the troops North Korea is sending to support Russia after weeks of rumors and counter-rumors — but it seems to be getting a little clearer at last.

Information on Ukraine at the UN Security Council

Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, addressed a meeting of Ukraine UN Security Council (UNSC) called on Wednesday to discuss the supply of North Korean weapons and manpower to Russia for the war against Ukraine.

Kyslytsya began by classifying the aid that Russia receives from North Korea (DPRK) as illegal and a violation of the UN Charter, as both countries were under UN sanctions, and listed the resolutions that Russia and North Korea violated. He called on the UNSC Sanctions Committee on North Korea to investigate the failure of Pyongyang and Moscow to comply with relevant resolutions.

He then went on to detail what is currently known about the deployment of DPRK forces. He said up to 12,000 soldiers were trained at five training grounds in Russia’s Eastern Military District. This number included at least 500 officers, including three generals from the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA).

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Kyslytsya named the generals as: Colonel General Kim Young Bok, Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Special Forces Operations; Colonel General Lee Chang Ho, Deputy Chief of the General Staff – Chief of the Reconnaissance Directorate; and Major General Shin Geum Cheol, Chief of the Main Operations Directorate.

According to Kyslytsya, the North Korean military will wear Russian uniforms, use Russian military ID cards and be integrated into Russian units led by ethnic minorities from the Asian side of the Russian Federation. He said the plan is to establish five DPRK manned units, each the size of a motorized rifle regiment.

He went on to say that since October 23, at least 2,000 DPRK soldiers have been airlifted near the border with Ukraine, with 400 arriving in Russia. Kursk region. He added that up to 4,500 North Koreans are expected to be able to participate in combat operations in November.

What are others saying?

The Financial Times reported that about 3,000 North Korean soldiers were moved by civilian trucks from the Russian Far East to a base in the Kursk region, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the Financial Times reports.

It cites unnamed Ukrainian intelligence sources as saying the 3,000 include several hundred special forces troops from the DPRK Army’s 11th “Storm” Corps. The same sources say the rest are inexperienced low-ranking infantry whose lack of combat experience and limited training raise questions about their likely effectiveness on the battlefield.

One intelligence source says they will be totally unprepared for high-intensity modern warfare, claiming that most of them have seen kamikaze drones, hundreds of which are constantly present on the Ukrainian battlefield. The source said Russia would most likely deploy them as yet more “cannon fodder.”

A South Korean intelligence source says much of the North Korean fighters’ training time is taken up learning about 100 basic Russian military terms – which the source said they “struggle to understand” as Russian soldiers are already skeptical about how they can. to communicate with the North Koreans and integrate them into their units as the Kyiv Post reported previous.

The DPRK’s 11th Army Corps and is part of North Korea’s alleged 200,000 special forces troops. According to the Washington Post, their training is almost entirely related to a future conflict in the mountainous areas of South Korea and specializes in sabotage skills, kidnapping of key individuals, surprise attacks and ambushes.

Although they are said to have the best training and receive the best weapons, their capabilities are called “rudimentary” compared to the special forces of most other countries by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

These views are shared by others, including Hyunsung Lee, a former North Korean special forces member who defected to the South, who says: “These soldiers will likely have difficulty adapting to modern warfare. They are not trained to handle advanced technology and equipment. If on the battlefield, the Ukrainians will use advanced technology, drones and missiles. They simply have no previous experience with this form of warfare.”

Go Myung-hyun, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul said: “They will not be super-soldiers, but they will be young, tough, in decent physical shape and much better than middle-aged regiments. Russian ex-convicts that Russia has used so far.”

What about the North Korean authorities?

Pyongyang at first scoffed at the first reports of South Korea deploying its troops, but as the evidence mounted, they stopped protesting, but neither confirmed one way or the other.

According to Russian media, North Korean Foreign Minister Choi Son Hee has visited Russia twice in the past six weeks and is expected to come to Moscow soon. A South Korean intelligence source told CNN they will discuss the possibility of providing more troops to the battlefield in Ukraine in exchange for unspecified “reciprocal services” from Russia.

… and China?

China is concerned about the presence of North Korean troops in Russia and the apparent developing relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, according to a report by the Financial Times. Beijing is said to have been particularly concerned about the strategic partnership agreement signed by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in June.

The FT article says that since then Chinese diplomats and officials have not been seen attending official joint events with North Korea to the same extent as before – although China’s Foreign Ministry continues to claim it was “unaware” of the DPRK referral. troops in Russia.

Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, told the FT that Beijing would be more optimistic. he says China he doesn’t like it, but realizes, “The North Koreans are doing this for money, military technology and battlefield experience, not out of any sense of solidarity with Russia,” before adding, “… and Russia won’t he was only in trouble out of gratitude to Kim Jong-un.”

What about the North Korean fighters themselves?

“Maybe they are not aware of the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, but they know that they have to fight for the national interests of their country. After completing 10 years of mandatory military service, they are trained to follow orders without thinking,” says Ryu Sung-hyun, a North Korean defector who served in the Korean People’s Army for nearly a decade.

He says that DPRK fighters are unlikely to dislike being in Russia (or Ukraine) because even for soldiers who are better off than many of their countrymen, “North Korea itself is a prison for them.”

Other benefits, according to Seoul, include that North Korean soldiers in Russia will be paid $2,000 a month, an astronomical sum in North Korean terms, and the social status of those who perform well on the battlefield and their families their will improve.

This is a developing story. Read more about the deployment of North Korean troops in the war with Ukraine Here.