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Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un attend a state reception in Pyongyang, North Korea, in June, 2024.
Can North Koreans help Russia push Ukrainians out of Russia?
North Korea's state-controlled news agency KCNA announced on Tuesday that the country has ratified a strategic partnership agreement that allows Russia to use North Korean troops to help push Ukrainians from Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukrainian, US, NATO, and South Korean officials have warned in recent days that Russia has amassed a force of about 50,000 troops to try to evict Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions – and they say the force includes 10,000-12,000 North Koreans.
The presence of North Korean soldiers could help Russia push forward with its offensive in Ukraine’s East. But beyond the ability of the North Koreans to draw Ukrainian fire away from Russian forces, it’s not clear how effective they will be on the battlefield. None of them has significant combat experience, and the Ukrainians they will be deployed to attack have been fighting in their country’s Donbas region for a decade.
In addition, throughout this war, Russian forces have faced command-and-control issues. It remains to be seen how Russian commanders can effectively coordinate real-time battlefield maneuvers with large numbers of non-Russian-speaking troops.
Ukraine swarmed Moscow on Tuesday with its biggest-ever drone attack. Russia said it had destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the country's capital and 124 more over eight other regions.
Hard Numbers: Moscow swarmed with Ukrainian drones, 9/11 first responder deaths rise, Argentinians head to the bank, Australia eyes age restrictions for social media
370: The number of 9/11 FDNY first responders killed from exposure to toxins at Ground Zero has risen to 370 – surpassing the number of department members who died on the day of the terror attacks 23 years ago. In the past year, 28 more members of the FDNY have died from 9/11-related illness. Meanwhile, federal funding is on the verge of drying out by 2028, when the program is expected to start turning away new applicants unless a proposed extension bill is passed.
700 million: Argentines are declaring hundreds of millions of previously hidden savings under a new tax amnesty program that President Javier Milei hopes will boost the country’s lagging economy. The program, which lasts until the end of the month, has fueled over $700 million of previously squirreled away cash to be deposited into banks in both July and August. Milei hopes the program will recoup $40 billion of the roughly $258 billion in undeclared funds that Argentines currently keep in mattresses, overseas, or otherwise outside its financial system.
16: The Australian government has set out to establish a minimum social media age, with the government expected to propose federal legislation later this year. Although the exact age limit has not been established, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he favors an age limit as high as 16 years old. The proposal has support across the political spectrum, but it is not clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such a ban.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un arrive for a gala concert in Pyongyang, North Korea June 19, 2024.
Putin and Kim sign mutual defense deal
Russian President Vladimir Putinarrived in Pyongyang early Wednesday for his first official visit to North Korea in 24 years. He met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and signed a deal to provide “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement.”
Putin called it a “breakthrough” document, but “aggression” is a vague term that leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
The real news. Russia, which has been isolated by the international community over its invasion of Ukraine, desperately needs more munitions to continue the war — that’s what this visit is really about. Moscow is deepening ties with Pyongyang to ensure it keeps the ammunition train rolling.
North Korea has sent roughly 10,000 shipping containers to Russia that could contain as many as 4.8 million artillery shells, according to recent comments from South Korea’s defense minister. Russia and North Korea have denied such arms transfers are taking place.
During Putin’s visit, North Korea notably declared “full support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
What does North Korea get? The expanding partnership between the two countries could see Russia provide North Korea with everything from food to military technology.
Like Russia over its war in Ukraine, the rogue state faces crippling sanctions over its nuclear program. Putin is also calling for increased cooperation between the two in fighting these sanctions, decrying such economic penalties as an effort by the West to maintain its hegemony.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, and Chief of the Russian Land Forces Oleg Salyukov attend a military parade on Victory Day, in Moscow, on May 9, 2024.
How high school explains Putin’s reshuffle
One way to look at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to replace long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with career economist Andrey Belousov is this: Since the invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s nerds have performed better than his jocks.
The jocks: Right from the start, Russia’s generals and spies – poorly prepared, badly informed, and deeply corrupt – screwed up what was meant to be a short victorious war. Two years later, the locker room bully clique continues to grind, slowly and destructively, across Ukraine, but that’s largely because Russia’s manpower is virtually unlimited while the West’s support for Ukraine is not. Despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’ssurprise visit to Kyiv today to tell President Volodymyr Zelensky military aid is "now on its way,” there's no doubt the recent slowdown in US support, thanks to months of congressional infighting, has exacerbated Ukraine’s challenges on the battlefield.
The nerds: The stars of math class, meanwhile – led by Central Bank Chief Elvira Nabiullina and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov – have done the seemingly impossible: They kept the Russian economy afloat despite crippling Western financial sanctions. They held the line as the “War Machine” became central to the economy.
Now Putin, settling in for a forever war against the West, wants to ensure it’s economically sustainable. His spokesman even warned of the danger of a “1980s” situation, when overspending on the quagmire in Afghanistan and the arms race with Washington helped to bring down the USSR.
To avoid a similar fate, Putin is now banking on a little nerd power at the barracks.
Russian Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov inspects the construction of apartment blocks in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, in this October 2022 image.
Shocked! Russian deputy defense minister jailed for graft
Russian authorities this week detained a prominent deputy defense minister on corruption charges. Timur Ivanov, a long-standing close ally of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, oversaw a wide variety of construction and logistics projects for the Russian armed forces, including in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Anti-corruption activists, including the outfit of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, had long focused on Ivanov’s lavish lifestyle. This is the highest-profile corruption takedown since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Now, if you are shocked – shocked! – that there’s corruption in Russian military contracting, we’ve got news for you: Corruption is rife in the Russian government. Getting busted is usually less about a sudden universal respect for transparency, and more about turf battles within the Russian elite.
Is Shoigu in trouble? Not yet, but note two things. One, he’s heard lots of criticism from pro-war hawks who accuse him of corruption and incompetence in his military strategy. The most prominent of them, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is no longer among the living, but the grumblings continue. Second, in just a few weeks, Vladimir Putin will be reinaugurated and will have to name a new cabinet. If Shoigu really is in any trouble, that’s when it will become clear.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron holds a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department in Washington, US, April 9, 2024.
Ukraine and Russia war over energy
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron visited Washington on Tuesday to lobby for greater material US support for Ukraine, and Congress is likely to provide a package that includes help for Ukraine by the end of the month, according to analysis from Eurasia Group, our parent company.
The war, meanwhile, has settled into a grim exchange of attacks that are unlikely to speed an end to the fighting, but which target energy supplies. Russia continues to launch missiles against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and it has reportedly begun to prioritize targets like hydroelectric and thermal power stations outside Kyiv and other major cities that are less well-defended.
In response to the Russian barrage, the EU has announced that help is on the way. Austria, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have offered 157 power generators as part of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, and the EU itself has deployed 10 large-capacity power generators from its own stockpiles.
For its part, Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck oil refineries deep inside Russian territory since the beginning of the year, and Russian air defenses haven’t yet found a way to defend against them.
Does Europe face a resurging terrorist threat after the Moscow attack?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
Is the terrorist threat to Europe back after what happened in Moscow?Well, the bad news is, yes, it's there. There's no question about it. It's still coming out. Central Asia, Afghanistan. We have a very disturbing situation in part of Africa with ISIS gaining ground in different ways, so not directly threatening Europe so far. And we should not forget that we have a situation in the Middle East with Gaza and all of the emotions that that is leading to, that is bound to be a recruitment possibility for these particular groups. The good news, if there is any, is of course that evidently the Americans were able to pick up advance warning of this particular terrorist attack. And that shows that we have intelligence capabilities combined with different countries that could give us somewhat more security than perhaps we had in the past. The bad news in this particular situation is, of course, the Russian authorities didn't listen and very many innocent Russians had to pay a very heavy price for that.
We have to learn all of these particular lessons as we move ahead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to a question at a press conference in the Kazakh capital of Astana, September 16, 2004.
NATO added seven former Soviet bloc countries 20 years ago
Twenty years ago this week, then-President George W. Bush welcomed seven former communist countries into NATO: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
This marked the largest expansion of NATO to date and it pushed the alliance further eastward to Russia’s doorstep, laying the rhetorical groundwork for one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s many justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022.
In the lead up to the invasion, Putin said Russia was “swindled” by the alliance, claiming Moscow was "given promises not to move NATO infrastructure to the East, not a single inch." Contrary to Putin’s claims, there was never a formal agreement to this effect and experts say the Russian leader has distorted history with such assertions.
But this hasn’t stopped Putin from repeatedly accusing NATO of betrayal over the years. And NATO expansion has been at the heart of Putin’s aggressive behavior toward Russia’s neighbors. Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia came just months after NATO welcomed Georgia and Ukraine’s aspirations of joining the alliance. Before it launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia sought guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia would never be accepted into NATO — a demand the alliance rejected.
But Ukraine and Georgia joining the alliance’s ranks remains an unlikely prospect as long as the Russia-Ukraine war continues. Still, with NATO on the verge of celebrating its 75th anniversary next week, the alliance is the strongest it’s been in years. NATO in the past year added two new members — Finland and Sweden — thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin hoped to deter NATO expansion by invading Ukraine, but achieved the exact opposite.