Russia reaches out to North Korea as invasion of Ukraine slows to crawl

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin unveiled a statue Sunday in Pyongyang honoring the North Korean troops who helped Russian forces repel an incursion into Kursk Oblast.

The event indicates that ties between Russia and the only state to send troops to join the Kremlin’s forces on the battlefield remain warm — at a time when Kiev may finally be stemming Moscow’s advance.

Mr. Kim and Mr. Volodin cut a ribbon to unveil the “Memorial Complex and Museum of Military Exploits of the Heroes of the Foreign Military Operation,” fronted by the heroic statue.

The artwork, in classic revolutionary style, depicts two North Korean soldiers hefting the flags of their state and Russia, with one raising a defiant fist. They are flanked by advancing soldiers with machine guns and assault rifles, with one North Korean soldier supporting a wounded Russian comrade.

“It is a great honor for us to be in Pyongyang these days, to participate in the opening of the Memorial Complex and Museum of the Military Exploits of the Heroes of the Foreign Military Operation,” Mr. Volodin said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. “We jointly honor the memory of those heroes who died giving their lives for the freedom of our homeland. This is truly a gesture from a friend.”

Watching from nearby seating were senior North Korean officers in dress uniform, and apparent veterans of the conflict in battle fatigues.

Unlike his late father, Kim Jong-il, a virtual recluse, the younger Mr. Kim has made public activities central to his leadership style.

He has been filmed embracing wounded veterans in wheelchairs, kneeling to lay flowers at a mausoleum of the war dead, and approvingly examining paintings of the conflict.

The bilateral good vibes in Pyongyang were preceded by the opening of the first road-bridge linking the two nations, over the Tumen River, on April 21. Previously, they had been joined by a rail bridge.

North Korea-Russia ties were revitalized via a 2024 mutual-defense pact and were proven amid North Korea’s first-ever major overseas troop deployment in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

As many as 13,000 North Korean troops, identified by South Korean experts as members of the 11th Storm Corps, a crack assault unit, and the Reconnaissance General Bureau, Pyongyang’s Tier-1 special forces, fought in Kursk between November 2024 and April 2025.

Ukrainians noted that the North Koreans were physically fitter and better shots than their Russian counterparts, and well-equipped with Russian kit.

They suffered heavy casualties. They also fought to the death or — in extremis — killed themselves. Only two were captured alive, both wounded.

After Russia retook Kursk, the North Koreans withdrew from combat: A clause in the 2024 bilateral agreement only extends to defense of each party’s home soil, not to offensive operations.

But since early this year, according to Kyiv media, North Korean tube and rocket artillery based in Kursk has been bombarding Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast. North Korean engineers are also engaged in dangerous non-combat tasks: clearing mines and unexploded munitions.

And in late April, footage surfaced on the Internet purporting to show North Koreans units arriving at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

It is unknown what Mr. Kim and Mr. Volodin discussed behind closed doors in Pyongyang, but a new deployment of North Korean troops may have been on the agenda.

According to a senior officer from a NATO army who visited South Korea recently, Kyiv earlier this spring crossed a key red line: Ukraine’s troops are now killing Russians faster than Moscow can replace them.

Ukrainian forces are deploying massed drone units both in the air and on the ground while leveraging an accelerated kill chain. The latter is the process via which enemy are identified and struck: From sensor recognition — be it satellite imagery or close drone reconnaissance — to tracking the target(s) to selecting the appropriate weapon system, to neutralizing the enemy.

The extended oversight of all-weather, day-night sensors — and the increased range of long-range, precision fires — has massively lengthened the kill zone beyond the “zero line.”

Though Russia’s advance rolls on, its pace has slowed: Russian forces advanced at an average of about 2 square miles per day in the first three months of 2026, compared to an average rate of 4 square miles per day in the first three months of 2025 the Institute for the Study of War assessed on March 31.

Russian troops are now being killed — not just in combat, but also tens of miles behind the zero line — at a faster rate than depots can replace them, the officer said.

After a single recall of 300,000 reservists in September 2022, the Kremlin has manned its Ukrainian invasion using strictly professional troops — “kontratkniki,” named for the lucrative enlistment contracts they sign — rather than conscripts.

Kontraktniki are fighting alongside contingents of foreign mercenaries from nations including India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as Russian convicts.

Questions have long hung over how long Moscow’s manpower can sustain. Pyongyang could provide significant reinforcements: With a population of just 26.5 million, it armed forces are 1.2-1.3 million strong.

Of those, some 200,000 are estimated to be elite combat-ready troops — light infantry, paratroopers, amphibious troops and special operations forces.

Manpower is not the Kremlin’s only battlefield problem. Russian battlefield control and communications have also been hard hit.

Russian forces in Ukraine have this year suffered from the loss of black-market Starlink Internet terminals. After Kiev supplied a “white list” of Ukrainian-owned terminals operating on its own soil, SpaceX remotely deactivated terminals not on the list — the majority being those used by Russian invaders.

Russian units have also been impacted by an ongoing domestic crackdown on the use of Telegram channels, widely used for intra-military communications.