History in the Making: Russian Invasion

More rumors (not about Angry's junk):

I don't see this in the general news yet:

Security Service of Ukraine charged the former deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine with high treason

Some older info here:   https://news.yahoo.com/former-deputy-head-main-intelligence-143000158.html

According to Russian reports:

100,000 North Korean soldiers could be sent to bolster Putin’s forces fighting Ukraine

More humorously:

He said: “If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them.”

Because, nothing the NK hate more then a nationalistic, authoritarian governmental style generally run by at least a semi-dictator.....

Obviously this will NEVER happen.  These are people who have no concept of what goes on outside of NK.  Can you imagine what would result if they shipped 100,000 halfway around the world!!

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/100000-north-korean-soldiers-could-be-sent-to-bolster-putins-forces-fighting-ukraine/news-story/1126782c8c5e6fe08a8ad2d9fa38dff0

99,000 is totally feasible but I just don't think 100,000 is going to happen.

As a statistician once told me "never trust a round number".

Putin is admitting that the Russians need help?  Against Ukraine? How embarrassing.  

Noddaz said:

Putin is admitting that the Russians need help?  Against Ukraine? How embarrassing.  

Honestly if we were a different country in a different world we would EMP their infrastructure and while they are trying to reboot everything wipe the Kremlin clean off the map. Yes nuclear would be an option after that but it would be so much less likely if they couldn't even use the elevators to get into the bunkers to push the buttons. Assuming that Putins not already there

"North Korean forces mobilized to fight Ukrainian fascism". Wow, just wow. In other news, up is down, black is white and seatbelts kill ya. 

It'll never happen.  NK can't afford to let their tightly controlled narrative be spoiled by letting their troops see that other armies are well paid and well fed....

Wait, crap.

I recall that NK has a history of sending people to Russia as cheap labor. 

And then?

In reply to Noddaz :

From March 3, full article

An estimated 20,000 North Koreans have been dispatched to Russia to earn foreign cash for the regime. Pyongyang sets a quota for each worker in U.S. dollars and keeps the lion’s share of the wages the workers earn while abroad.

Getting away from the probabilities and reasons surrounding the suggestion of NK troops "volunteering" for duty in Ukraine (cf. China in Korea, 1950), I'm quite curious about the logistics of the exercise. I'm sure NK has the bodies, but getting them thousands of miles across Russia (is it just the men, or are they bringing their own equipment/supplies/ammunition?) via a single rail line is a task. According to what I can find, it takes a train about 12 days to cross Russia. How many men per train? How many trains? How much capacity does Russia have in both rolling stock and rail line? We're probably talking about the better part of a month just to get the force in place if it's just men, let alone if they have all their kit with them. Then more time to get up to acceptable unit cohesion, integrate them into the Russian command structure (I have to figure they'd be under Russian command), and deploy into the theater. It's a project, and once in contact, there's no guarantee that those units stay cohesive. Mass NK defections to the Ukrainian side would be a PR disaster for both NK and Russia.

Noddaz said:

And then?

No and then!!!

02Pilot said:

Then more time to get up to acceptable unit cohesion, integrate them into the Russian command structure (I have to figure they'd be under Russian command), and deploy into the theater. It's a project, and once in contact, there's no guarantee that those units stay cohesive. Mass NK defections to the Ukrainian side would be a PR disaster for both NK and Russia.

I'd be more worried about Kim Bung One's reaction to a NK "tourist" being killed by Ukrainian soldier while on a "maybe democracy is worth a closer look" vacation.

In reply to 02Pilot :

Disclaimer; this is all second hand information either through briefer's  or Helicopter crews who actually fought in country. 
   Luckily my only combat flying in country was extremely brief and I was never shot down to experience  this in person. 
    The numbers of NK was very limited to 1 or 2 per platoon.  Their uniforms were very distinctive  thus easy to identify. Where the VC often had no uniform or only bitsa pieces of uniforms. 
     They were reported to be extremely aggressive  and tenacious.  Gunners said it's like they wanted to die.  But take as many Yankees with them as they could. 
  The River Boat  guys would announce to us if there were any NK  in the area. And if there were  they tried to avoid them.     
 Mind you we were were often near the DMZ  or even up in Yankee station working.  Orders typically were to stay 3 miles off the beach which down south of the DMZ we could reasonably safely overfly narrow jut's  of land.  But never north  up in Yankee station.  
 That mistake had cost the squadron most of its early losses.  
  VC  were clever and very sneaky  but if there were NK with them they were another whole level more aggressive. 
  The only Sam launched at my plane personally was supposedly a NK operation.   Often we'd hear the radar acquisition  go to lock on and nothing would be launched even when we'd bring multiple planes together as bait  for the wild weasels (A6's ) 

  My point is if the NK joins the Russians. That's going to dramatically change the tone of the war.  Especially if the Ukrainian guys are getting tired and worn down.  

In reply to frenchyd :

Clarify for me, if you will, that you're referring here to North Korea and not North Vietnam. There are some things you mention that suggest the latter, but I'd rather be clear on the reference. And in either case, there's a huge difference between motivation of troops defending their homeland versus being shipped halfway around the world to fight in a place of which they know nothing.

As far as experience with the North Koreans in combat, it's been a long time since 1953, and NK isn't receiving anything like the support it did during the Cold War. Malnourishment and poverty are rife, and while I'm sure indoctrination is still strong, a lot of that is going to melt away once they get outside the NK wire.

I saw it pointed out elsewhere, that if Kim actually sends combat troops to Ukraine, he'll be sending the bottom of the barrel, and not planning on them coming back.  The cynical reason being, he gets paid by Russia, ends up with fewer mouths to feed, and, since the male/female ratio in NK will be out of whack, (very sadly) can sell more women into domestic servitude in China.

In reply to eastsideTim :

He treats his population like livestock. On a badly run farm.

As far as I can find, most of the NK media noise has come from NK who has nothing to lose by making this kind of noise/bluff. 

I may be wrong, but Russians are some of the most etho-centric people on the planet. Not sure how well they are going to fare dealing with NK "volunteers" who to be honest, will probably represent the bottom of the NK human barrel. 

Has Russia really run out of soldiers to the extent that they NEED NK to swell the ranks? I thought Russia had an endless supply of people that would swarm to the front given the chance to defend the motherland. No way they could exhausted the supply of bodies in 5 or 6 months!!! If they did, people back in Russia would be losing their E36 M3 what with all the dead sons/husbands. And they don't seem too worried yet.

From an attrition standpoint, Russia has energy to heat and food to feed the population. The economy can survive forever in idle mode since the only real loss will be luxury items. Most of the essentials to supply the war effort can be made in country after a short time to tool-up and history has shown has fast that can happen in a war industry.

Lets measure the west effort by the effect it is having on Putin's army of Oligarchs: Has any one of them had to move out of the mansion and go on welfare? Bit less boating perhaps, but other than that it seems Business as Usual. Maybe Putin should have sent lawyers to Ukraine rather than soldiers?

The issue is not that Russia is running out of soldiers, but rather that it's running out of low-rate peacetime conscription soldiers. To fully exploit the size of the population, it would have to implement a much more aggressive draft, which in turn would likely create major economic and social upheaval. Comparatively, bringing in a bunch of foreign soldiers with low demands, and low expectations of survival, would probably be less problematic. They would be subject to the same sort of political supervision by internal security forces that Russian troops are currently, which doesn't seem to be a major hurdle for Russia to manage. But as I noted above, it's not an easy undertaking, and if you think the Ukrainians have done a good job of exploiting Russian defectors and evidence of internal dissent in the media, wait until you see what happens when the NKs start defecting. It could certainly happen, but right now I see little reason for Russia to run the risk. If, on the other hand, Ukraine successfully retakes Kherson while holding the line in the east, Russia could start to get more desperate and be more open to such an option.

02Pilot said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Clarify for me, if you will, that you're referring here to North Korea and not North Vietnam. There are some things you mention that suggest the latter, but I'd rather be clear on the reference. And in either case, there's a huge difference between motivation of troops defending their homeland versus being shipped halfway around the world to fight in a place of which they know nothing.

As far as experience with the North Koreans in combat, it's been a long time since 1953, and NK isn't receiving anything like the support it did during the Cold War. Malnourishment and poverty are rife, and while I'm sure indoctrination is still strong, a lot of that is going to melt away once they get outside the NK wire.

Yes North Koreans fought with North Vietnam.  They did so extremely aggressively, with heroic bravery, and great cunning. 
         You wildly underestimate your enemy if the tone of your comment reflects your feelings.  
     My opinion?   If you've been indoctrinated all of your life  that your enemy is wicked, corrupt, and a beast  it's pretty hard to accept anything different.   
      Far from bottom of the barrel reluctant  soldiers, I suspect they would send only volunteers, the best of their best who appreciate the opportunity to excel ( and possibly move up the ranks) 

   Russia is another thing entirely.    They has access to global news and realize  the difference between their lives and the rest of Europe and America.   Draftees are treated like cannon fodder.  Poorly fed and trained.  Plus they often come from extremely poor conditions.  Drugs and disease is rampant in Russia.  

It sounds to me like if there's any truth to the NK thing at all, Vlad is going to use them as a low-cost means to attrit the Ukrainians and perhaps pin them down and avoid angering the locals with losing Russian troops.  If any NK troops end up getting back to NK then they're "combat experienced" which is a win for Kim Jong Un, above and beyond what Vlad is going to give him in payment.  Otherwise, the NK troops (especially if they're tankers using Russian reserve hardware) for the Ukrainians to use expensive (and hard to replace) ammo to kill 3rd rate units.  Vlad uses the meantime to train new units and hit Ukraine harder the next time they go on the offensive.   I can see how it would make sense on paper (or under a tinfoil hat) but color me very, very skeptical per O2's observations.

In reply to frenchyd :

During Vietnam, North Korea was still a (relatively) strong industrial state that had not collapsed to the point it has today.  Even if determined, it is highly unlikely NK soldiers are trained, fed, or equipped as well as they were back then.

In reply to eastsideTim :

 If your whole world is poverty and lack of decent food,  then that is your norm rather than life as we in the west know it.  With their  media  isolation  they don't know any different.  They accept their life as it is. (Fatalism).   
      In any group of people some will excel.  If Kim has to deplete his population to bring in some cash.  Then so be it!   

Let's just say, there are different "types" of democracy....

Russian occupation officials may be accelerating their preparations for illegitimate pseudo-referenda on the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian Mayor of Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ivan Fedorov, reported on August 7 that resistance among Ukrainian residents has forced Russian authorities to “constantly” change their plans for a referendum. Fedorov claimed that occupation authorities had planned a single day of voting but are now considering seven days of “voting from home” in which armed Russian military personnel will go house to house and “interview” Melitopol residents.[1] Fedorov claimed that only about 10% of the civilians remaining in Melitopol support Russia’s occupation and warned that Russian soldiers will threaten to shoot residents who do not vote for annexation.[2]  Ukrainian Kherson Administration Advisor Sergey Khlan noted that occupation authorities have not fully set conditions for a referendum as of August 7 but are accelerating their preparation after a three-week pause in preparations, which Khlan attributed to Ukrainian HIMARS attacks on Russian occupation logistics.[3] Occupation authorities could also alter the timeline of their sham referenda in response to changing realities on the ground, including a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Khlan reported that the preliminary referendum date remains September 11.

"Interview"

The UK Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) confirmed ISW’s previous assessments that Russian military leadership has experienced major turn-overs due to Russian military failures in Ukraine.[9] UK MoD reported that at least six Russian commanders have likely been dismissed from their posts since the beginning of the war in February, potentially including Eastern Military District (EMD) commander Colonel General Aleksandr Chayko and Western Military District (WMD) commander Colonel General Aleksandr Zhuravlev. UK MoD additionally stated that Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov has been removed from overall theater command of Ukraine and that Army General Sergey Surovikin has taken over the “Southern Grouping” of forces in Ukraine. UK MoD concluded that the lack of consistency in the Russian command structure and continued losses to military leadership on the battlefield are complicating command and control and the overall effectiveness of operations in Ukraine. ISW has previously reported on changes to Russian military command and continues to track the ramifications of these changes on Russian offensive capabilities.[10]

I really want to see a Ukrainian offensive, if for nothing else, to see how the Russian forces react.  I suspect it will less then effective in adapting to things not going as planned.

In reply to frenchyd :

Do you have any documentation on NKs in Vietnam beyond the anecdotal references you gave? I haven't heard of any presence in ground units, only a small contingent of pilots and some construction workers.

Here are a couple of articles on the NK pilots in Vietnam from the Wilson Center and the National Interest. Also of note is another Wilson Center piece on the motivations for and methods used by NK to support North Vietnam, which offers some real insight into why NK might be volunteering forces to Russia today.

In reply to aircooled :

If you look through history rebel troops  are at their best in smaller skirmishes. Depleting , and undermining Regular troops.   
    It wasn't until the French sent their fleet to the US that Washington really was able to directly attack  the British head on. 
    Same with North Vietnam.  They lost masses of troops fighting against the US  until the US withdrew and left South Vietnam  troops on their own.  
    President Bush (sr) fought the Gulf war brilliantly  getting wide support  and participation  prior to Attacking Saddam Hussain .