PUBLISHED on August 14, 2025, 3:53 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary: Russia is solving its massive manpower crisis in Ukraine by importing thousands of North Korean troops and laborers, a move that has troubling implications.
-Facing staggering casualties and a domestic labor shortage, Moscow has deployed at least 10,000 North Korean soldiers to the front lines in Kursk.
-In addition, thousands of North Korean laborers are being sent to Russia to work in “slave-like” conditions on construction sites, freeing up Russian workers for the defense industry.
-This desperate alliance with Pyongyang highlights the severe strain the war has placed on Russia’s military and demographic stability.
North Korea Providing Critical Manpower for Russia’s War in Ukraine
WARSAW, POLAND – Russian President Vladimir Putin has had no end to problems with military personnel and defense industrial manpower since he began his illegal February 22, 2024, invasion of Ukraine.
What now appears to be the answer to this twin dilemma comes down to two words: “North Korea.”
In the first year of the war, the former KGB Lt. Col. first had to cope with losses of dead, wounded, and missing that were far in excess of what his war planners had anticipated.
Within a year, the Russian military resorted to various desperate measures, continually adding more soldiers to the ranks every month.
By September 2022, the UK Ministry of Defence was reporting that the Kremlin-linked Russian private military company (ChVK), the Wagner Group, had been recruiting convicts from Russian prisons to be sent to the front. At the same time, Russian military academies were cutting corners on training courses and bringing the graduation dates for the corps of cadets forward.
The cadets were also told they were graduating early to be deployed in support of combat operations. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russia had even been dragooning sick and wounded soldiers from hospitals to replace battlefield losses.
DPRK Troops Fighting on the Russian Side
In August 2024, Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Putin, already short of the manpower necessary to maintain operations along the front in the Eastern Donbas region, began receiving troops from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to fill the gap.
In December 2024, two months after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and South Korean officials had accused Pyongyang of sending troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was later confirmed that some 10,000-11,000 North Korean troops were already fighting alongside the Russian Army in Kursk.
The initial assessment was that these troops would be assigned non-combat roles due to their lack of any battlefield experience. But, US and Ukrainian intelligence sources subsequently revealed that these North Korean soldiers had, in fact, engaged in combat against Ukrainian units.
However, the influx of more soldiers to replace Putin’s war losses did not resolve another problem that has increased markedly in the past year. Moscow faces a dire—perhaps even a fatal—population problem.
Russia has been in the midst of a demographic crisis for decades, which in no small measure is a hangover from the economic and social catastrophic consequences that characterized the final years of the USSR and Russia in the 1990s.
Russia’s lack of manpower and a host of other disparities in the population have been exacerbated by extremely adverse trends: deaths outpacing births year after year, rampant growth of diseases like HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, etc., and multiple waves of mass emigration by some of the most talented individuals in the country.
North Korea to the Labor Shortage Rescue
Russian officials and Soviet functionaries before them have tried desperately to reverse or at least halt this downward spiral, but to no positive result. Kremlin policies to boost birth rates in European, industrial regions have consistently failed to augment what the Russian officials have euphemistically called “maternal capital.” Even Putin’s emphasis on population growth as a national priority has had no impact. The Russian population has nevertheless remained in decline.
These numbers have caused an acute labor shortage in Russia, particularly in the defense sector, where the gap between the number of needed skilled workers and demands for increased military production has continued to widen.
Dmitry Zemlyansky, an economic researcher who spoke to the Moscow Times, explained that foreign workers are most needed in sectors where laborers have transitioned to the defense industry. Russian factories hired 47,000 foreign workers in 2024 in an attempt by the industrial sector to address worsening shortages of specialists, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported in late June.
So, it was only a matter of time before the Kremlin began importing thousands of North Korean laborers to work at unskilled tasks, freeing up more educated Russian workers to take on more complex endeavors.
According to a report this week by the BBC, thousands of North Koreans are being sent to Russia to work under slave-like conditions in response to the labor shortage. The UK state-run news service interviewed six DPRK workers who had worked in Russia and had since escaped.
They described how they were placed into “abysmal” working conditions, and how DPRK authorities are turning the screws on how they control these workers to prevent them from escaping. One of them recalled landing in Russia’s Far East, whereupon a DPRK security agent escorted him from the airport to a construction site.
The agent instructed the worker, named Jin, not to speak to anyone or look at anything. “The outside world is our enemy,” the secret police officer told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for more than 18 hours a day, he said.
In 2024, more than 10,000 DPRK laborers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence official who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity. He told the broadcaster that even more of their kind were expected to arrive this year, with Pyongyang possibly dispatching more than 50,000 workers in total.
“More casualties of Putin’s war,” said another South Korean official who spoke to National Security Journal. “These are also victims of Putin’s wartime meatgrinder,” he said. “You just hear less about them than those who are dying on the battlefield.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the US Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
Military Matters
The F-22 Raptor Just Keeps Getting Better
Eddie71310
August 14, 2025 at 10:56 pm
I’m pretty sure the war started before ‘2024
Swamplaw Yankee
August 15, 2025 at 2:01 am
First: There is NO war. Nothing new like a war has started, unless it is in the fantasy mind of an op-ed’er.
In 2014 the POTUS Obama + his Democrat Cabal unilaterally greenlighted the RE-START of the ancient 1000 year old Genocide of Ukrainians. Yes, Fact the russkie peasant has been genetically coded to genocide Ukrainians as the orc russkies “sex trade” their “Lolita” Packages for gold/cash.
The important point, is that the NATO nations refused to make public this betrayal of the WEST 11 years back. Europe knew the re-start of the genocide was on and that each EU country needs to defend the WEST.
The EU nations chickened out in any attack on the Betrayer of the WEST, mulatto Obama. The thought was, the USA tax payer will fund again and again the snoring inaction of the NATO European states! -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
August 17, 2025 at 4:25 am
On this: the WEST needs to double triple the men that they insert into Ukraine. This, we all eu nations are cowards song, must stop. The reality that these states are highly filled with cowards, is so very illustrative.
Do not be joyful that MAGA POTUS Trump is unable to outwit Zi’s vassal Putin.
Until we see, hear, the feet of EU state troops inside Ukraine, the Zi regime, thru his vassal Putin, has the WEST outplayed. MAGA POTUS Trump just displayed to the WEST his incapacity internationally. Zi has just one people to genocide, to outwit: the Ukrainians.
The rest of Europe, Zi just shows them a few thousands of attack drone/ missiles and they can all promptly surrender to Zi’s spy network subversives, well entrenched in each state.
Forget all this western fantasy of F-35 dream tech air frames. The winning tech is in low air tech. -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
August 24, 2025 at 11:54 pm
This is a social indicator. Zero peer reader feedback on this topic of slaves from d PRC CCP Xi regime heaven.
The meatgrinder is there as an aid to entertain muscovite elite in their genetic need to Genocide Ukrainians. It is a far stretch to make a hypothesis that the captive nations inside the Russkie Federation demand their men be sent to the russkie meat grinder.
The reality is that there is little benefit for the Han PRC CCP Xi regime to actually challenge the USA armed forces. The USA armed forces are so incapable of resisting the “Axis of Gulag States” that it is dangerous to state in the MSM the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
Watch the “Caolan Roberetson” recent video. This ” front line” journalist clearly states that only the Ukrainian Fathers Army has the capability to innovate and be assymetrical with the “Axis of Gulag States” military MONSTER. yes, Putin has a huge mass of men.
The lack of huge time frames dedicated to Ukrainian army training has created a unique mass Father’s army, men capable of technology transfer in every unit. It is as if the Ukrainian Fathers are back in 1616 and innovating how to outwit with nothing the muslim Ottoman Sex Trading slave fleet and forts.
Ad Rem: The Xi regime intelligence actually wants to go up against the best, the Ukrainian Fathers. As the PRC CCP allocates the cash to send in hundreds of thousands of military bodies to acquire unique skills, the USA MSM whines that they know all + Xi has only sent in about only 10,000. Sure, fellas.
The whole world falls over in pain of ridicule, as they re-watch the USA idiot military show off their Guinness World Book of Records drone grenade drop video. The damage is so, so done!
Everyone knows that the Ukrainian Army is the place where technology transfer is unfettered. Xi’s intelligence is in the Ukrainian front lines like flint and learning as the meat grinder vector shows off the ability to skew kill numbers. The “Axis of Gulag States” learns hourly as the genius IDF brains hide their heavy armour, like Merklava, behind their kiddie walls. Billions of tax payer Shekels in future expanded capacity for heavy armour might be useful. But: fill in the obvious blanks, you, who assidiously hide that armour from cutting quantum second, razor edge reality.
Meanwhile, the genius morons in the US DNI, et al, all whine the US must never be allowed to spend a single tax dollar placing a Yankee foot on Ukrainian soil. Spend that tax cash all on air frame fantasies.
Ukraine is the best army. This analysis from a “FRONT” line reporter. Not some USMC has-been, retired brass head from an ancient encounter. A couple of grunts assigned inside 2025 Estonia is great, but, the USA brass heads all “poop their pants” if they were assigned to spend 7 full days inside Downtown Kherson Ukraine. The Orc russkie Genocide crew is ready to “Harvest” with their Human Safari.
The PRC CCP has the meat grinder bodies in Ukraine, as they directly challenge Ukrainian Fathers with their 1X or 2X 24/7 drone/missile reserves. Really, the PRC CCP is actually challenging the Cowards safely way back in the MAGA POTUS elite Cabal.
Reminds the detached observer of 1939-1940-1941 when the Yellooouu Belliiiee ran the USA. The yelloooouu Belliiie Yankees demanded that Newfoundland and Canadian lads and lasses die + get maimed as the cowards cuddled with maraichi songsters down with their amigo heroes in Mexico.
Or, will the MAGA POTUS White House insiders finally awaken to the PRC CCP “Axis of Gulag States” intent options! It is not just North Korea muslims, fellas. The MAGA POTUS only has a few weeks of power in which to project + tax fund boots on Ukrainian Soil and ears intently listening for the latest PRC CCP Xi funded and supplied drone/misssile technology.
Oh yeah: the inner state spy plants will wave Putin’s Redlines all about as they demand the USA do zip, zero to enable it’s armed forces to save itself. -30-