Text | Ruiguan Jingwei
Editor | Ruiguan Jingwei
In the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield in the late autumn, in the battlefields of the Kursk region, in addition to the figure of the Russian military soldiers, there was a group of fighters from North Korea's "storm army", whose steel helmets were printed with a familiar red star, and the weapons in their hands combined with Russian military equipment.
When South Korea's intelligence agency disclosed the support list, the outside world truly understood the scale: 15,000 officers and soldiers, hundreds of containers of artillery and ballistic missiles, plus thousands of military construction workers and demining personnel responsible for post-war reconstruction.
In October 2025, North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Tri Digi,’s visit to Moscow further extended the Eurasian cooperation from the battlefield to the Kremlin negotiating table.
Is this wave of joint countermeasures a temporary tactical alliance between North Korea and Russia, or is it an attempt to leverage the long-term layout of the global order? When current U.S. President Trump's trip to Asia collided with this meeting, has the balance of global power already been quietly tilted?
Back in the late autumn of 2024, an assessment report by the South Korean intelligence agency unveiled for the first time North Korea's rush to help Russia: about 15,000 North Korean officers and soldiers have entered Russia in batches, including many elites of the 11th Army of the North Korean Army.
This force, known as the "Tempestrian Legion", was known for its fast-attack capabilities during military exercises on the peninsula, and now takes on side-wing defense and counter-attack tasks in the Kursk Railway Battle with a tactical skill refined in the cold winter of the peninsula.
At a press conference in January 2025, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zakharova specifically mentioned the contribution of this force, saying that it "interprets the trust between allies with actual combat actions" and that the trajectory of weapons delivery is equally clear. Find.
A satellite analysis report released by the Royal United Services Institute of Defense in October 2023 showed that the Russian cargo ship "Volga River" has traveled between North Korea's Rajin Port and Russia's Dunay Port many times. Every time it docked, terminal surveillance can be photographed. Hundreds of containers with the "Military Materials" logo were hoisted.
By October 2024, satellite images released by the U.S. government further confirmed that the final destination of these materials was a large ammunition depot in the Krasnodar region of Russia. It is estimated that the number of artillery shells and ballistic missiles alone is enough to support the Russian army. Half-year combat requirements for two mechanized brigades.
The layout of logistical support is equally striking compared to the input of front-line operational forces, and Kim Jong-un made it clear at the Korean Labour Party Central Conference in February 2025 that he would send a "professional logistics team" to Russia, followed by thousands of military construction workers and miners arriving in Donetsk.
In the post-war reconstruction site of Malinka town, North Korean workers quickly set up a temporary military camp with pre-prepared boards, and miners with domestic miners cleaned up unexploded ammunition in the ruins, this whole chain of "operation + logistics" support, has long gone beyond simple arms trading, has become a miniature of North Russian strategic cooperation.
Looking at the statement issued by the Central Military Committee of the DPRK in April 2025, which clearly stated the legal basis for the participation in the war, the "Russian-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty", which entered into force in December 2024, laid the framework for deep cooperation between the two countries from the beginning of its signing.
On October 27th, Cui Shanji's visit to Russia began with consultations with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, and their talks at the Foreign Ministry building in Moscow lasted nearly three hours.
At the briefing after the meeting, Lavrov specifically mentioned the combat deeds of North Korean soldiers in Kursk. He said that those days of fighting side by side in the trenches were not simple cooperation, but unity bonds to be written into the history of the two countries.
Two days later, on October 29, Cui Shanji walked into the Kremlin and had a more tacit understanding with Putin. Putin not only asked her to convey personal greetings to Kim Jong-un, but also recalled the scene of the Beijing meeting in September 2025,"At that time, we were in the banquet hall. We chatted late into the night, and the ideas for cooperation in multiple fields are now being implemented step by step."
The details disclosed in this meeting contain a new direction for cooperation between North Korea and Russia. In an interview with KCNA, Choi Shan-hee said that the current North Korea-Russia relations have "jumped out of a single field and entered a new stage of all-round development." North Korea not only supports Russia in Ukraine. Action, but also agrees with its strategic idea of "defending its own security interests and eliminating the root causes of conflict."
The Russian side gave a reciprocal response. Deputy Director of the Presidential Office Kozak made it clear that Moscow would "firmly support North Korea's efforts to safeguard sovereignty and security in multilateral occasions such as the United Nations."
In addition, the two sides also specified a high-level interaction plan for 2026: Kim Jong-un will visit St. Petersburg in the first half of Russia, and Putin will travel to Pyongyang in the second half to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of North Korean-Russian relations, from the battlefield to diplomatic coalition, from short-term support to long-term planning, and North Russia is weaving a network of cooperation covering military, political and diplomatic.
Just as Choi Shan-hee and Putin were meeting, current U.S. President Trump was embarking on his trip to Asia. From Tokyo to Seoul to Manila, Trump mentioned "responding to the challenge of DPRK-Russia cooperation" at every stop, but the specific measures have always been vague.
The embarrassment of this "verbal pressure more than actual action" is actually rooted in the years of impasse in U.S. and DPRK relations, time drawn back in February 2019, in Vietnam's Hanoi's Sophit Legendary Hotel, Trump and Kim's meeting was finally unsuccessful.
The United States insisted on North Korea's "complete, verifiable, irreversible nuclear abandonment", but was unwilling to promise a comprehensive lifting of economic sanctions, while North Korea believed that the U.S. side had "lack of negotiating sincerity", and since then completely closed the door to dialogue with Washington and Seoul.
Over the years, it is not that Trump has not tried to restart dialogue. After the G7 Hiroshima Summit in June 2023, he sent a signal to North Korea through third-party channels that he is "willing to hold unconditional talks". During the 2024 US election, he also held a campaign rally that "the North Korean issue can be solved within six months."
However, Kim Jong-un's attitude has always been clear: North Korea will consider returning to the negotiating table only if the United States abandons the "prerequisite for abandoning nuclear weapons." Behind this stance is North Korea's long-term dissatisfaction with U.S. sanctions.
The United Nations Trade and Development Conference 2024 report shows that the U.S.-led sanctions have caused North Korea's foreign trade volume to decline by 62 percent in five years, while Russian cooperation is exactly the breakthrough to break North Korea's isolation, since 2024, North Russia has not only signed an energy cooperation agreement, but also cooperated in the field of railway, ports and other infrastructure, which have given North Korea a foundation to fight Western sanctions.
The influence of DPRK-Russia cooperation has long exceeded the scope of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield. From the battlefield perspective, the supplement of North Korean troops has directly alleviated the manpower pressure on the Russian army.
Statistics of the battlefield of the Russian independent media "Newspaper" show that as of October 2024, the number of Russian troops killed in Ukraine has exceeded 70,000, and the accession of North Korean soldiers, allowing the Russian military to focus more on key battlefields such as Kharkov, from the level of international order, this cooperation is weakening the U.S.-led coalition system.
As North Korea openly broke Western sanctions to deliver weapons to Russia, as Russia defended North Korea’s nuclear policy at the United Nations, more non-Western countries began to realize that, in addition to “no side standing,” they could also defend their own interests through “autonomous cooperation.”
Northern Russia’s model of cooperation may be a model of a multi-polar trend, which does not form military groups, but defines strategic goals through treaties, does not openly confront the United States, but uses practical actions to counter Western influence, does not seek ideological exports, but reaches consensus under the banner of “defending sovereignty”.
This model of “low pragmatism and precision” may be used by more countries, such as Iran’s defence cooperation with Syria and Brazil’s energy cooperation with South Africa.
A May 2025 report by the Brookings Institution in the United States pointed out that "the unipolar order is disintegrating, and the rise of multipolar forces is not an accident, but an inevitable choice of countries after being disappointed with the hegemonic system."
When North Korean soldiers set foot on the frozen ground of the Ukrainian battlefield, when Russian diplomats exchanged silent gaze in the Kremlin hallways, this Eurasian-wide collaboration has long been no longer a strategic idea for military talks on paper, but is re-shaping the real process of the global power plane.
The hegemonic system of the United States once relied on sanctions, military alliances, and ideological exports to maintain it for decades, but now, North Korea and Russia use "actual combat support + in-depth cooperation" to prove that the era of unipolar dominance is passing.
In the future, how to adapt to the new multipolar order and how to resolve international disputes while respecting the sovereignty of all countries will become issues that all major powers must face.