North Korea has previously sent approximately 15,000 troops to join Russia’s war against Ukraine. That’s not all. North Korea has also provided Russia with hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and dozens of ballistic missiles. But Pyongyang is now escalating. As Reuters reported last week, “A North Korean missile unit has begun deploying to western Russia and could be equipped with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers for strikes against Ukraine.”Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service has carried out numerous assassinations of Russian military officers inside Russia since the war began. It has conducted operations against Russian irregular forces in Africa. Ukraine is also strongly suspected of responsibility for a November 2022 explosion that damaged Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe. And just last month, Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea (Iran has provided extensive support to Russia’s war effort, primarily through attack drones).
There’s no question that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has given Ukraine ample cause for new action.After all, this North Korean missile deployment is plainly designed to help Russia exploit Ukraine’s crisis-level deficit of Patriot air defense munitions. While Ukraine has developed ingenious ways of intercepting the legions of drones that Russia throws at it every night, ballistic missile intercepts require the Patriot system (due to their systemic military underfunding, the European anti-ballistic missile systems in Ukraine’s possession are limited in capability and armament). And while Ukraine is pleading for more Patriot interceptors, the United States is reluctant to provide them due to its own deep shortfall amid the Iran war (this shortfall greatly undermines U.S. deterrence of China).Russian President Vladimir Putin thus wants Kim’s help in pummeling Ukraine while it’s down and before the U.S. or Ukraine’s other partners provide Kyiv with added means of pressuring Russia in reciprocity. Putin sees escalating missile attacks as a means both to degrade Ukrainian resolve and to broadcast a punitive response to Ukraine’s extraordinarily successful drone campaign inside Russia. But Ukraine’s big fear is that Russia will be able to smash its energy infrastructure and freeze Ukraine’s population as winter approaches.Hence why expansive Ukrainian retaliation against North Korea might be on the table. But how to do so?The most direct way to strike back would be by targeting the North Korean cargo ships that deliver munitions to Russian ports just across the border. These Russian ports connect to railway networks, which then speed supplies toward Ukraine. But as in my screenshot below (from MarineTraffic.com), there is only a very small area in which Ukraine could intercept North Korean vessels at sea. It would be possible, but extremely complex. That leaves the option of targeting North Korea cargo ships while they are at port. Again, however, this would be very complex.A Ukrainian operation to seize North Korean cargo ships bound for Russia would likely be very complex. (MarineTraffic.com)
