The News
North Korea has suffered at least 100 casualties fighting alongside Russian troops in the Ukraine war, the US and South Korea said, pointing to the increasingly global nature of the conflict.
The announcements by Washington and Seoul came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Brussels to shore up support from European allies ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office.
The UK’s defense secretary, meanwhile, is reportedly considering sending British troops to Ukraine to train Kyiv’s forces, according to the BBC.
SIGNALS
Dozens of nations are now embroiled in Russia’s war in Ukraine
So many counties are now either directly or indirectly involved in the war that even “the most dogged of isolationists would have a hard time selling [it] as a ’regional conflict,’” wrote Politico in a piece headlined “World War III is already underway.” Both Kyiv and Moscow are increasingly framing the war in global terms: Ukraine says it is fighting for “democracy,” while Russia rails against the “collective West.” By the same token, however, Ukraine’s backers are accountable to public opinion at home. Americans are now evenly split on whether the US has a responsibility to help Ukraine, according to the Pew Research Center, and the idea of Ukraine ceding territory “appears to have gone from being taboo to lodestar,” Politico wrote.
For developing countries, ideological battles come second to the economy
Many in the West hoped the developing world would rally behind the rules-based order, but “Asia has largely rejected the conflict as a battle between might and right” in favor of pragmatic non-alignment, an Asia-Pacific expert at Chatham House said. Pro-Russian narratives do have some reach in the Global South, but economic factors may be more significant, a Russia expert wrote for Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung: Countries dependent on Russia for food, grain, and fertilizers find it “hard, if not impossible” to shun Moscow. “The immediacy of the painful economic spillover of conflict translated into a position that supported the cessation of war, even if that… would play into the hands of Putin,” an international relations expert argued.
Despite losses, North Korea sees much to gain
North Korea’s involvement in the war serves its mission of reshaping the Korean Peninsula, an expert argued for the Royal United Services Institute. Russia may now be more likely to come to North Korea’s aid in the event of any future conflict with South Korea and the US. North Korea also sees army deployments as a “good way to earn money,” the director of the Korea Risk Group told the BBC: Moscow pays Pyongyang $2,000 per soldier every month, according to South Korean intelligence estimates.