What do you think about North Korea sending troops to help Russia's fight with the Ukrain?
There are reports that 100,000 North Korean volunteers are prepared to come and take part in the Russian war with the Ukraine. I think if they do it will bring the World closer to another world war. Cheers and happy weekend!
Putin would be crazy to accept them. A hundred thousand emaciated, poorly equipped troops with zero combat experience? All either fanatical communists or would-be defectors?
Whatever the origins of that photograph, I don't know how "starving" or ill-equipped the North Korean army is in reality, and anyway it would presumably be supplied by Russia in a mixture of normal military systems and by sheer looting.
I wonder though about the word "volunteers".
I'd also wonder what's in it for the North Korean rulers. For them it may be an opportunity for sowing even more instability in the world; or they might simply be trying to curry favour, as they have very few friends in the world apart from China.
It is risky though for President Kim's mob. Whilst they are not likely to care about their troops' death-tolls ("dead heroes") they might well lose plenty of living ones by defection if their Russian comrades-in-arms seem better equipped, fed, trained etc; and of course by exposure to two obviously much wealthier countries they know nothing of except as one being an "enemy" they must destroy.
It sounds like desperation on Putin's part, and a recipe for chaos, not least due to the huge language and cultural differences; but also by battlefield inexperience, high casualty rates, a high risk of mutinies and AWOL, and possibly many "friendly fire" incidents by confusion. .
I think it would also be a heavy diplomatic gamble for Putin. Despite both Presidents' lack of any humanity, if things do not go as Moscow and Pyongyang hope, and thousands of the unfortunate Asians end up dead, disabled, diseased, displaced or defected, that might not help the entente be very cordiale. Kim's China pals might become very nervous about it all as well, and I cannot guess how Beijing might react to that outcome.
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Diseased? Well, obviously but not only, the little problem of Covid.
North Korea seems to have escaped relatively lightly, although truth from that land is a scarce commodity. We are pretty sure though that the standards of their hospitals and health system generally, are very low. It is a poor country that spends much of what little GDP it has, on its armaments. Its primary protection from importing diseases appears merely its sealed borders, with very few people allowed across them in either direction.
The Russian soldiers and any Ukrainians taken prisoner are likely to have been vaccinated routinely against Covid and other illnesses, and also to have developed partial immunity naturally. That does not necessarily mean they would not carry the disease; we don't know the N. Korean's general immunity, and moving very large numbers of troops over very large international distances is a gift to an infectious pathogen highly-skilled at exploitative mutating.
The Koreans generally would be the more likely worse sufferers as their homecoming heroes bring all manner of micro-organisms back from the insanitary deprivations of a far-distant war. If they are poorly-fed and malnourished their resistance to any disease will be very low anyway. It could of course work the other way: the mass of mercenaries taking their local virii and bacteria strains to their Russian fellows. I would guess the "other ranks" probably would not mix much, except for a relatively few in tasks like stores-labouring, and casualties in field hospitals; but the staff officers at least would need to meet, and they would all be using Russian supplies.
Either way it would be similar to the spread of the non-Spanish, 1918-1919 Influenza pandemic.
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At one point President Putin was talking of recruiting mercenaries from Iraq or Syria. That seems to have become very quiet so did it never take place?