A battalion of 3,000 North Korean soldiers will shortly join Russian troops in fighting Ukraine, marking Pyongyang’s full entry into the war.

Intelligence sources said the unit has been secretly training in Russia’s Far East ahead of deployment as part of a Russian airborne regiment.

“They are called the Buryat Battalion,” a senior Ukrainian military source told Politico. Buryatia is a remote region of Russia bordering Mongolia that the Kremlin has targeted heavily for military recruitment.

The Kyiv Independent quoted another Western intelligence source claiming that North Korea had sent 10,000 soldiers to join the Russian army.

(…)

  • @[email protected]
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    161 hour ago

    Any North Korean soldiers captured should be held prisoner in some Scandinavian prison and fed nothing but the most decadent and tasty foods. Then when the war is over send them back to NK fatter than Kim Jon Un. That would be a real power play.

    • @[email protected]
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      1255 minutes ago

      You can’t serve Scandinavian food to prisonners it is forbidden by the Geneva convention.

      • @[email protected]
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        529 minutes ago

        If meatballs and mashed potatoes with lingonberry sauce are against the Geneva convention it’s probably time we had on Oslo convention.

        • @Aceticon
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          17 minutes ago

          Smorgasbord all day every day would be Tortute!

      • @Klear
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        18 minutes ago

        Because it causes Stockholm syndrome?

  • @[email protected]
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    112 hours ago

    With the current attrition rate of Russian forces, these 3K troops will likely be expended in ~2.3 days…

  • @Burn_The_Right
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    31 hour ago

    If Putin does something stupid the elicits a direct response from the U.S., he will regret going all-in on this. We could use a good excuse to make the NK problem go away.

  • @Maggoty
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    163 hours ago

    What Russia likes about North Korean Soldiers in Ukraine: Manpower!

    What North Korea likes about North Korean Soldiers in Ukraine: Money!

    What North Korean Soldiers like about North Korean Soldiers in Ukraine: Freedom!

  • @Valmond
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    164 hours ago

    The great Russian army. The great russian army with the best weapons and tanks and soldiers.

    What a paper tiger.

    BTW it’s rumored that they are running out of both tanks and bmps. If trump doesn’t win (if he does, it will just take longer) the whole russia will collapse like the soviet union did in 1991. The ruble is already in free fall, inflation at 20%, the economy is overheating and fewer and fewer young people left to work or be killed.

    I just hope it crumbles as soon as possible but I guess this insane war has to drag on for some 6 months to a year.

    • @Maalus
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      112 hours ago

      I mean you list all of that and ignore the biggest elephant in the room. 40% GDP spent on the war.

    • @[email protected]
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      82 hours ago

      BTW it’s rumored that they are running out of both tanks and bmps.

      I feel like people have been saying this for about 2 years. We should believe it when we see it.

      • @Maalus
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        52 hours ago

        We do see it lol. There are people who get satellite photos of tankyards in Russia. They pay Google to take a new photo over a specific base, count the tanks, armored vehicles and trucks, and make a youtube video about it. Russia is losing an enormous amounts of tanks. They can’t retrofit enough of the old stock to keep up with the losses, let alone produce new tanks.

      • DerGottesknecht
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        153 minutes ago

        Look Up covert cabal on YouTube. He works together with a guy called himarsed to painstakingly count tanks, bumps and other stuff on commercial satellite imagery and regularly posts updates on the Russian arsenals. And they are pretty empty now

    • @[email protected]
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      72 hours ago

      Dictatorships can take a lot of abuse before falling apart. Look at North Korea. People are starving and still that fuckers in power.

      • @Maalus
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        32 hours ago

        Dictatorships only stand because of the military. The military which is currently being slaughtered en masse in a war they didn’t need. We are one week “where decades happen” away from Russia colapsing. Shit like Prigozin, like Kadyrov launching a blood feud, etc.

        • @[email protected]
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          139 minutes ago

          As long as they can find soldiers and equipment somewhere and the economy doesn’t completely collapse, they can keep going. It will get harder every year but I think it could still go on for years more.

  • @aggelalex
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    204 hours ago

    What a great opportunity for those north Koreans to defect to Europe

  • @Kbobabob
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    459 hours ago

    Lmao, I just saw an article on here about NK soldiers abandoning the front lines. That didn’t last long

    • @[email protected]
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      156 hours ago

      Why fight die for some other country’s pointless war? If I was there, I’d leave, too.

      I’d also encourage any US troops who are sent off to fight for Israel in the future to do the same lol.

      • Mubelotix
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        114 hours ago

        Because someone’s watching you with a gun to your head. Deserting is hard

          • @Maalus
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            32 hours ago

            So your idea is to heroically kill a blocking batallion by yourself by turning around. So now there are Ukrainians wanting to kill you in the rear, and Russians wanting to kill you in the front. Said Russians also have a firepower advantage over you in the form of artillery that they can throw at deserters too. They have air support, reserves and military police that can quash any deserters.

            Unless half the army walks with you, you having a gun doesn’t mean shit.

            • Cethin
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              211 minutes ago

              No, the grunts should just kill their officers and surrender to Ukraine ideally. They could go back towards Russia if they wanted to take that risk, because it’s not an impenetrable wall like you’re implying. It’s still a risk though. Probably better odds than fighting though if they don’t agree with the war.

  • Flying SquidM
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    3811 hours ago

    Ukraine’s about to get a lot of defectors…

    • @sqibkw
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      266 hours ago

      Unfortunately many North Koreans already leave the country to work as slaves for construction companies, factories, etc (including in Europe). Generally they only allow people out who have families back home to be tortured/killed in case they defect.

      They will probably get some, but less than you might expect.

      • @Maggoty
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        83 hours ago

        There’s a pretty big difference between construction work and human wave tactics in a warzone. Different levels of motivation to defect.

        • @ammonium
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          92 hours ago

          And different opportunities, going MIA on a construction site is suspicious, but during war? Who can tell whether they defected or died?

  • @T00l_shed
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    7913 hours ago

    Ok, it’s only fair if Poland gets to join too.

    • @NOT_RICK
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      2412 hours ago

      Better give Poland some nukes for parity

      • @[email protected]
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        4611 hours ago

        If the invasion of Ukraine hasn’t taught everyone that the only way to not get invaded is to have nukes I don’t know what will.

        • Cethin
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          32 hours ago

          Honestly, no it’s also done the opposite. Ukraine has passed so many of Russia’s “red lines” that it shows nukes are useless too. The only time a nuke is useful is when you’ve already lost. If you use one then you get a lot of other groups attacking you, and potentially you get nuked yourself. You can’t actually really use one in defence.

          The only way to not be invaded is to be stronger than your potential opponents. Si vis pacem, para bellum. (If you want peace, prepare for war.)

          • @Maalus
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            41 hour ago

            It hasn’t done the opposite. It has slowed response from the US and other countries significantly. For some things the US still doesn’t want to give Ukraine permission. Sure, Poland was giving tanks almost immediately after the war started, showing the hole in logic. But a lot of other countries went for “non leathal aid” like body armor, helmets. They only sent more after a year or so. Truth is, if Russians got Kiev and got Ukraine to capitulate after like 6 months, they’d only gain on the landgrab, with no consequences other than sanctions (which we see how they don’t really have the impact they should have and are skirted constantly). Decade or two in the future? Relations would probably be strained still, but returning to normal.

            Appeasement is sadly the way of the world. That’s why Hitler, Stalin and now Putin were so successful.

        • @Fedizen
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          3 hours ago

          good point. Loading up ukraine with nukes would have created a serious problem for russia. The problem is it would have given Ukraine independence from the US as well.

        • @[email protected]
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          4910 hours ago

          Seriously - I’m genuinely baffled at the complete geopolitical ineptitude that occurred in 2014. It was a categorical abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty in exchange for their surrender of old Soviet nukes based in their territory.

          Nobody is going to make a deal like that going forward. The nuclear non-proliferation movement is entirely dead. Nukes are, categorically, the absolute final word in guaranteeing a country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. There is no substitute. Genuinely, the complete and total lack of meaningful action in the defense of Ukraine was the most apocalyptically stupid geopolitical move that Obama and Merkel made during their stints as leaders of the western world.

          • @Cornelius_Wangenheim
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            55 hours ago

            Nah, it was second behind the invasion of Iraq and the forever war in Afghanistan. The US’s unwillingness to react was in large part because it had been weakened by a decade of idiotic wars in the Middle East. Europe has no excuse though.

          • @T00l_shed
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            79 hours ago

            Yup. Going to hell in a hand basket.

    • @camr_on
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      210 hours ago

      Send the Poles, they’re itching for it

  • @NocturnalMorning
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    2712 hours ago

    Hopefully this isn’t the stsrt of turning this into a larger conflict that spills into other countries.

    • @Matriks404
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      66 hours ago

      Wait for US fighting Iran and these two wars merging.

    • chingadera
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      108 hours ago

      This is exactly that

  • @HomerianSymphony
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    -67 hours ago

    So one intelligence source says 10,000 have already been sent, and another says 3,000 will soon be sent.

    These are just rumours. Inconsistent rumours.

    This is clickbait for a paywalled article.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 hours ago

      This is true for basically everything in a war zone. Some idea is better than no idea IMO. Yes, you have to piece together your own assessment from the data, but I’d prefer to have the data than not.

      • @HomerianSymphony
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        02 hours ago

        Yes, but you don’t have to overstate things in the headline so much.

    • @HomerianSymphony
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      7 hours ago

      Another story I saw says that North Korean troops were spotted in the Russian military. How could an observer know they were Korean? Were they wearing a Korean uniform? And if so, why haven’t we seen any photos of that? Ukrainians have cameras, right?

      Is this just a case of Ukrainians not being able to tell the difference between Buryats and Koreans?

      Edit: Come to think of it, it’s more likely a case of Americans not being able to tell the difference between Buryats and Koreans.

      I can only imagine their shock when they eventually learn that Russia, a country that spans all of north Asia, has Asians in it.

      • @HomerianSymphony
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        -67 hours ago

        Part of me thinks “Surely American military intelligence must know there are different ethnic groups in Russia”.

        But then I remember how the invasion of Iraq happened in part because the Americans didn’t understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Iraqis.

        • @Valmond
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          54 hours ago

          Removed by mod

          • @HomerianSymphony
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            56 minutes ago

            I sometimes think of something to say after my original comment.

            And is “comrade” supposed to be a dig of some kind? Because it isn’t.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 hours ago

          The US understands very well the different religious factions. The way the West Asia region was carved into countries by the colonial powers is identical to what they did in Africa. Deliberately creating countries with internal conflicts that can be exploited for destabilizing them.

          However it is easy to tell apart Siberian ethnicities from Koreans. You can also tell apart Eastern Europeans from Western Europeans, leave alone the fact that Korean is an entirely different language from Russian or the languages of the region.

          Edit: regarding the languages. In Buryat people speak dialects of Mongolian. Mongolian has a shared ancestry with Turk languages.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolic_languages

              • @HomerianSymphony
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                142 minutes ago

                I know. I’m not the one who claimed Turkish is related to Mogolian. The other guy said that.

                Did you respond to the wrong person?

                • Flying SquidM
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                  034 minutes ago

                  You both seemed to be in agreement on that, so…

            • @HomerianSymphony
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              2 hours ago

              What’s with the downvotes? Are you all Altaicists here?

              Who would have thought the worst thing about Lemmy was all the bad linguistics theories.

              Edit: Oh, come to think of it, I guess bad anthropological theories are a bit of a staple of American reactionaries.