Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
ESTIMATES of how many troops North Korea is deploying to fight Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine keep on rising. The total will far exceed 10,000 if recent reports are accurate. Three to six North Korean brigades with up to 6,000 personnel each have been in training in Far Eastern Russia. The latest from Kyiv says that some hundreds or thousands have completed their training and are already in combat zones in Kursk and Eastern Ukraine.
Both Russia and North Korea are still denying that North Korean troops are fighting the former's war. But if it happens, Russia says, it will be the logical result of the two countries' mutual defense partnership and in accord with international law. Russia is now playing the part of the aggrieved party after Ukraine's incursion into Kursk. The overriding truth is that Putin's "special military operation" that has turned into a war of attrition is not only running out of weapons and equipment but has been looking abroad for fighters and workers. Russia has lost a quarter-million soldiers and is losing 1,200 a day in the war. But the lives of his soldiers don't matter to Putin. What Putin is afraid of is the mood of the Russian people souring and turning against him if he further mobilizes them. Even the ethnic minorities, which have been the focus of Putin's mobilization efforts, have been protesting on the streets or fleeing to the mountains and abroad.
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