White Home: Russia discussing arms cope with North Korea as warfare in Ukraine drags on

Russian President Vladimir Putin has exchanged letters of help and cooperation with North Korean chief Kim Jong Un because the Kremlin scrambles to seek out extra sources of weapons and ammunition for its warfare in Ukraine, the Biden administration confirmed Wednesday.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu just lately made a high-profile journey to North Korea for talks with Mr. Kim. High-level arms negotiations between Moscow and Pyongyang at the moment are “actively advanced” and should proceed within the coming months, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby instructed reporters. Iran has additionally actively provided Russian forces in Ukraine with low-cost navy drones.

“Russia would receive significant quantities and multiple types of munitions from [North Korea], which the Russian military plans to use in Ukraine,” Mr. Kirby mentioned. “The potential deals could also include the provision of raw materials that would assist Russia’s defense industrial base.”

Mr. Kirby warned North Korea that supplying Russia with offensive weapons would “directly violate” a lot of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Moscow is especially inquisitive about finding extra artillery rounds due to the character of the preventing in Ukraine, Mr. Kirby mentioned.

“What we’re seeing in [the current Ukrainian counteroffensive] is a gunfight. Both sides are blazing away with artillery,” he mentioned.

The accusations got here on after an evening by which Ukraine despatched waves of drones deep throughout the border into western Russia in a four-hour salvo, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. With a minimum of six areas focused, the wire service famous, the barrage ranks as maybe essentially the most formidable Ukrainian drone assault on Russian soil for the reason that warfare started 18 months in the past.

Some of the Ukrainian drones hit an airport close to Russia’s border with Estonia and Latvia, inflicting an enormous blaze and damaging 4 Il-76 navy transport planes, the Russian state information company Tass reported.

That Russia is asking for navy {hardware} from nations like North Korea and Iran is a marked change from the Cold War period when the Soviet Union provided weapons to Marxist governments and revolutionary armies world wide. President Vladimir Putin has achieved none of his strategic objectives since he launched the warfare towards Ukraine nearly two years in the past, Mr. Kirby mentioned.

“He has lost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of troops either killed or wounded in this war. Now, he’s reaching out to Iran for drones and he’s reaching out to North Korea for artillery,” he mentioned. “It’s hard to look at any of that and come away thinking that Mr. Putin is somehow stronger or he’s better positioned.”

Along with a scarcity of artillery ammunition, Russia is outwardly having issues discovering ample troopers for fight operations in Ukraine. Despite making navy service extremely profitable — a junior soldier in fight is paid nearly 3 times the nationwide common for civilian employees — Russian troops are more and more going AWOL from the entrance strains.

Prosecutors filed felony prices towards greater than 2,000 troopers accused of fleeing their posts within the first half of 2023. That’s greater than twice the variety of AWOL circumstances for the complete earlier yr, Russian unbiased media mentioned.

Mediazona, a Russian information outlet that has criticized Mr. Putin’s warfare in Ukraine, mentioned opposition within the ranks is driving the rising variety of desertions within the armed forces. The firm mentioned they based mostly their evaluation on a examine of Russian court docket selections.

“The majority of these sentences are suspended, thereby enabling the command to send violating soldiers back to the front lines,” Mediazona reported.

Last week, two Russian troopers have been sentenced to 2 years in a penal colony for refusing to return to their models in Ukraine. Their refusal to struggle seemingly displays a scarcity of motivation and ample coaching together with the continued stress that Russian troops face alongside the entrance line in Ukraine, British navy officers mentioned Wednesday.

“Although some soldiers have refused to fight and attrition rates remain high, Russia likely mitigates their loss by committing a mass of poorly trained soldiers to the frontline,” British officers mentioned on X, previously Twitter, of their newest evaluation of battlefield circumstances in Ukraine.