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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.
People wait in line to buy bread before Rafael's arrival in Havana, Cuba, on Nov. 5, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Cuba battens down the hatches, Mexico’s judicial reform stands, Iran’s currency hits record low, Tsk tsk Pyongyang, Reckless raccoon
8: On Tuesday, Mexico’s Supreme Court dismissed a proposal to narrow the scope of a controversial reform plan that would require all judges in the country to stand for election. Seven of the 11 justices voted to limit the election requirement to Supreme Court justices, buteight votes were needed to water down the reform.
703,000: On Wednesday, Iran’s currency fell to an all-time low as news of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election hit markets. The rial traded at703,000 to the dollar before a slight recovery later in the day.
2/3: Ten of the 15 current UN Security Council members condemned North Korea’s recent launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile and called on Pyongyang to return to negotiations. Ecuador, France, Japan, Malta, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom supported a US statement of condemnation. Russia, China, Algeria, Mozambique, and Guyana refused.
8 billion: At the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s LaGuardia airport, a raccoon fell through the ceiling at a departure gate earlier this week, causing chaos. This smaller terminal was not part of the infamously ramshackle airport’s recent$8 billion upgrade.
New buildings skyline in Changjon area, Pyongan Province, Pyongyang, North Korea
Putin to visit North Korea and Vietnam
Russian state media reported Monday that President Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks as Moscow tries to build influence among middle powers in Asia.
This will be Putin’s first trip to Pyongyang in 24 years, and he’ll find the city much changed. In 2000, the massive unfinished Ryugyong Hotel loomed skeletally over Stalinist-era apartment blocks, in an almost-too-on-the-nose metaphor for the country’s paranoid and feeble state two years after the 1994-1998 mass famine. Putin was in town to officially reestablish relations with North Korea, which had ruptured following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, the DPRK is no less totalitarian, but the economy can now support a facade of prosperity in Pyongyang — including cladding for that still-empty hotel, and some high-rises nearby to soften the landscape. It also now has nuclear weapons to protect itself from the US and artillery shells Russia needs in Ukraine, meaning Putin has to show up with something a little more high-tech in hand.
He’s previously pledged to help North Korea put spy satellites in orbit, which it accomplished for the first time last year. But a subsequent launch this May, which South Korean intelligence believes was aided by Russian technicians, exploded shortly after takeoff. Nonetheless, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he wants to launch three more spy satellites this year, and we have our eye out for any indication of where the cooperation might go from here.
The Vietnam leg is less juicy by comparison. Hanoi and Moscow have a tight military relationship stretching back to the early Cold War, but Vietnam has recently been courting better relations with the US to offset threats from China. We’re expecting a carefully choreographed visit with little that could rock the boat.
The flags of Russia and North Korea.
Hard Numbers: North Korean arms to Russia, terror in Brussels, Meloni eyes tax cuts, pro-Russian Georgian politicking, Palestinian-American boy murdered
1,000: White House officials say North Korea has sent up to 1,000 shipping containers of “equipment and munitions” to Russia recently. Satellite images purportedly show clear evidence of Russian ships linked to military transport networks collecting the cargo – signs that Pyongyang is aiding Moscow’s war efforts.
2: Two Swedish nationals were killed in a shooting in Brussels on Monday. The attack in the Belgian capital took place during the Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier soccer match, and play was subsequently halted. The gunman, who is believed to have been Tunisian, posted a video on social media claiming to have waged the attack in the name of God. He was shot dead by police late Monday.
24 billion: Italian PM Giorgia Meloni aims to cut taxes and boost public sector incomes next year, and her cabinet approved a budget on Monday to spend 24 billion euros ($25.3 billion) to make it happen. Meloni needs to boost growth and consumption quickly, before next June’s European Parliament elections, which could test her coalition government.
100: The Constitutional Court of Georgia found the country's pro-western President Salome Zourabichvili guilty on Monday of breaching the constitution by conducting visits with European leaders and lobbying for her country's membership of the European Union without government consent. While her opponents in the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia are unlikely to get the 100 votes they need to remove her, the president – who constitutionally represents the country in foreign relations – is expected to face intense pressure to resign, perhaps paving a route for a pro-Russian leader to take the helm.
26: As we’ve mentioned, the war in the Middle East has sparked an uptick in hate crimes around the globe. One of the latest victims was six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume, from the Chicago area, who was stabbed 26 times on Saturday and died from his injuries. His mother was also stabbed and remains in hospital, and police have charged the suspect with murder and hate crimes.A TV screen shows an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang.
North Korea hacked who now?
For five months in 2021-2022, North Korean hackers ran wild in the systems of a top Russian missile company, according to a new report by Reuters.
The breach of NPO Mashinostroyeniya, which makes Russia’s cutting-edge hypersonic cruise missiles, was discovered by Reuters and a team of cybersecurity experts who were tipped off when an IT person at the Russian company uploaded info about the hack to a server monitored by global cyber analysts.
These are friends, right? Despite some hiccups over the years about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs, Moscow and North Korea have generally enjoyed good relations, and since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two countries have drawn closer as Putin looks for non-Western partners who know a thing or two about isolation.
It’s unclear what intel the North Koreans got in the hack. But experts note that shortly afterward, Pyongyang debuted a missile powered by solid fuel, a tricky technology that makes it easier to deploy the weapons undetected. NPO Mashinostroyeniya had been developing similar fuels.
The company discovered the breach itself, but we don’t know if the Kremlin was informed, so keep an eye on Russia-North Korea ties in the coming weeks for any fresh fallout.
Either way, the episode shows two things: First, Russia’s elite military technologies are hackable by those with the right skills, and second, there’s a trust deficit even in the Kremlin’s closest partnerships. Recall that Russia recently arrested a scientist for passing hypersonic secrets to China.
And yes, there’s a song for this: GZERO’s Puppet Regime satire series is on it. “With friends like these, who really needs enemies?”
Freed Houthi prisoners stand as they wait to board an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)-chartered plane at Aden Airport, in Aden, Yemen.
Hard Numbers: Yemen prisoner swap, North Korea’s new missile, Germany ditches Russian imports, gender parity in Kiwi cabinet, Juice headed to Jupiter
900: In the biggest prisoner exchange in Yemen since 2020, 900 prisoners are expected to be swapped in the days ahead as part of ongoing talks between Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, and the Saudi-backed government. The confidence-building measure comes amid rising hopes that Yemen's brutal eight-year war might soon come to an end.
1,000: North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile test in a month, with some reporting that Pyongyang tested an advanced, harder-to-detect missile for the first time. Following a 1,000-kilometer flight (620 miles), the missile landed in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Japanese authorities on the northern island of Hokkaido urged residents to seek shelter.
91: German imports of Russian goods dropped by 91% during the first year of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow had previously been the country’s 11th-biggest source of imports, but as a result of Western sanctions has since dropped to … 46th place.
10: Jacinda Ardern may have bowed out, but women leaders are getting ahead in New Zealand. For the first time, the country has gender parity in the cabinet. Thanks to a reshuffle by PM Chris Hipkins, there are now 10 women and 10 men in his cabinet.
8: Citing poor weather conditions, the European Space Agency has delayed the launch of a satellite to the planet Jupiter, an ambitious mission that will take eight years. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer project, dubbed Juice, aims to explore whether the fifth planet's major moons hold deep bodies of water. The agency will try again in the coming days.
British pound coins are seen in front of displayed stock graph.
What We’re Watching: Bank of England intervenes, Pyongyang provocations, Israel-Lebanon gas deal
Bank of England to the rescue?
The Bank of England stepped in Wednesday to try and calm markets that had gone haywire after the Conservative British government, led by new PM Liz Truss, introduced £45 billion ($49 billion) worth of tax cuts despite sky-high inflation. The bank will fork out £65 billion ($70 billion) to buy government bonds “at an urgent pace” to try to revive investor confidence and boost the pound, which recently fell to a record low against the US dollar. This development comes after the International Monetary Fund issued an unusual rebuke this week of British fiscal policy, warning that the tax cuts would exacerbate inequality. There are also concerns that some pension funds, which invest in government bonds, could be made insolvent following the collapse of UK government bond prices in recent weeks. Though the bank’s intervention is significant, there’s no indication that the Truss government is willing to reverse course (i.e. limit borrowing) to regain market trust. Meanwhile, in a keynote speech Wednesday, Labour leader Keir Starmer said Tories had “crashed the pound,” noting that “this is a Labour moment.” Indeed, Labour is currently trouncing the Conservatives in the polls, but Starmer would need to maintain this momentum until the next general election, which must be held by January 2025.
North Korean nuclear test jitters ahead of Harris trip to Seoul
Kim Jong Un loves to put on a big fireworks show to welcome top US officials to South Korea. But will North Korea's supreme leader literally go nuclear when Vice President Kamala Harris visits South Korea later this week? Washington is warning that Pyongyang might follow up this year’s flurry of missile launches with its first atomic test since 2017 … while Harris is in Seoul. Kim is likely upset that US and South Korean forces are holding joint military drills, which the North Koreans regard as a provocation. On the one hand, testing a nuke would put North Korea on everyone’s radar like the country hasn’t been since 2018, when Kim hung out with former President Donald Trump. On the other, Pyongyang passed on an opportunity to make a bigger atomic splash when President Joe Biden went to South Korea in May. Also, Kim might want to avoid doing anything rash that might upstage his friend, China’s Xi Jinping, who doesn't want any more trouble ahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress in mid-October.
Israel and Lebanon near a maritime deal
While Israel and Lebanon have fought several bloody wars, their most recent battle has been a maritime dispute over drilling rights in the Mediterranean Sea’s Karish gas field. Israel discovered the 860-square-kilometer field (332 square miles) in 2013 and plans to take it online in 2023 after years of delays. But Lebanon claims part of the field falls within its exclusive economic zone, something Israel refutes. What’s more, Hezbollah, a formidable player in Lebanese politics (deemed a terror group by the US), has called Israeli extraction at Karish a “red line” and has threatened to attack. In July, Hezbollah sent drones over the field, which Israel shot down. While Israel plans to produce most of this gas for domestic use, it could help boost production in the eastern Mediterranean, freeing up other sources for export – which could help Europe wean itself from Russian supplies in the longterm. Israel has tapped into several lucrative gas fields to become a net energy exporter in recent years, strengthening energy ties with former regional foes, Egypt and Jordan, and investing in LNG platforms. Lebanese President Michel Aoun recently said the US-driven talks are in their “final stage” and that a deal could soon be signed.
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