North Korea could deploy 50,000 troops to Russia in dramatic expansion of its role in the war

Antonia Langford.  Erin Donnelly

Published 12 August 2026

The violent crack and shudder of ballistic weapons ripping through the streets of Zaporizhzhia in the early hours was an all too familiar sound.

The front-line city in south-east Ukraine has faced a near-daily deluge of missiles, long-range strike drones, guided aerial bombs and first-person view drones.

Yet amid the familiar Russian barrage early on Tuesday was an unusual addition: North Korean missiles striking the industrial hub, bringing terror from the Far East to its densely populated streets.

Six people were killed and 19 injured in the strikes, described by Volodymyr Zelensky as a “vicious attack calculated to inflict maximum damage specifically on civilian infrastructure”.

As Moscow seeks to bomb Ukrainian cities into submission with a summer aerial campaign, it has found a most willing accomplice to prop up its war effort and economy, both of which have been devastated by Kyiv’s long-range strikes.

After a year-long hiatus in their use on the battlefield, Pyongyang has sent batches of its KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles to Moscow, with record numbers unleashed to take advantage of critical shortages in Kyiv’s stocks of Patriot interceptors.

Missiles are only part of the bargain. Mr Zelensky said on Saturday that as many as 50,000 North Korean troops could be deployed to Russia, a dramatic expansion of Pyongyang’s role in a war in which thousands of North Korean soldiers had already fought alongside Russian troops.

Meanwhile, an official from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said last week that a North Korean missile unit had begun deploying to the western Russian region of Voronezh, and could be equipped with as many as 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers.

The military commitments would mark Pyongyang’s most significant involvement in any conflict since the middle of the last century.

North Korea has deployed millions of artillery shells, several thousand soldiers and dozens of missiles for Moscow’s forces, as well as labourers to support its ailing wartime economy.

Yet the renewed and expanded support this summer suggests an ever-closer alignment of interests between the regimes.

For Putin, Pyongyang’s supplies of manpower, munitions and labour offer welcome relief as his war machine strains in its fifth year of fighting.

An endowment of 50,000 troops could help the Russian president maintain pressure on Kyiv while staving off a politically costly mobilisation in his own country, and larger stockpiles of missiles could keep up his bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

Meanwhile, for Kim Jong-un, the deepening partnership provides a stronger foothold in Moscow, greater freedom to manoeuvre beyond Beijing’s orbit, and access to a trove of hard-won lessons in modern warfare.

“On the North Korean side, they fulfil the role of a loyal ally to the Russians, incentivising Putin to technically collaborate with Kim on a variety of military and technical endeavours,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age.

“Kim has spoken about the need for the Korean People’s Army to essentially expose itself to modern warfare, which is a huge benefit of the role they can play at the front lines in the Russia-Ukraine war.”

As a global pariah, North Korea’s entrenchment in Putin’s war does not have the same geopolitical consequences as it does for Iran, China and Belarus, who each offered Russia tacit support far short of Kim’s military backing.

Mr Zelensky has warned allies about the potential repercussions of North Korea gaining practical lessons in warfare from Moscow’s forces.

“The more North Korean strikes there are here in Ukraine, in Europe, the more their missiles and soldiers are used, the more they correct their shortcomings and blind spots, the greater the danger will later be for Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines and other countries in the region,” he said.

North Korean troops first appeared on the front line of the war in October 2024, with an initial deployment of up to 15,000 troops.

By the end of 2025, Pyongyang was providing around 50 per cent of Moscow’s demands for 122mm and 152mm ammunition, Ukrainian officials said.

In return, it has received battlefield data, financing for its military programmes and access to technology such as anti-aircraft missiles, air defence and advanced electronic warfare, allowing it to refine its own weaponry.

In a further bolstering of ties, a bridge between Russia and North Korea is expected to open soon.

The bridge, which represents the first road link between the two countries, will be little over half a mile long, according to Russian state media.

It will increase the flow of goods and could become a supply route for North Korean weapons reaching Russia.

Moscow and Pyongyang were once tight-lipped about their burgeoning military alliance. They now flaunt it, with lavish memorials installed in both countries honouring the North Korean troops killed fighting for Russia.

For Kim, after all, there is much to celebrate: North Korea raked in some $22bn (£17bn) between 2022 and 2025, a record windfall resulting in large part from the mass export of supplies to boost the Kremlin’s war effort, Bloomberg reported last week.

There are other benefits to the alliance, including allowing North Korea to signal to Beijing that it has an alternative patron, playing China against Russia to maximise its benefits from both powers.

“Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to diversify North Korea’s foreign policy, not to over-rely on China as its principal economic benefactor, but also not to divorce itself from China completely,” said Dr Edward Howell, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Oxford.

“China is a bit uncomfortable that now North Korea has defence treaties with two countries – Russia and China. China only has a defence treaty with one country: North Korea,” he told The Telegraph.

“North Korea’s logic is what I call ‘strategic delinquency’: behave badly and reap as many rewards as possible.”

Original article, with diagrams and engineering drawings here :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/12/ukraine-putin-ropes-kim-offers-lifeline/