Kim Jong Un says he’ll ‘unconditionally support’ Russia’s war amid a report he’s sending 30,000 more troops against Ukraine

• Kim Jong One is committed to “unconditionally supporting” what Russia does to fight against Ukraine.

• It comes after a report in early July that he wishes to send 30,000 soldiers to Ukraine.

• North Korea, on the other hand, is estimated by Seoul which provided 12 million artillery in Russia.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong One said on Sunday that he was completely in the Russian war against Ukraine.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pyongyang wrote that Kim had met the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, during which the two leaders committed to “strengthen strategic and tactical cooperation” between their countries.

Kim said he was “willing to unconditionally support all the measures taken by Russian management in relation to the fundamental resolution of the Ukrainian situation,” said the report.

This comes as CNN reported on July 2, citing an evaluation of Ukrainian intelligence and an anonymous Western official, who said that there was information indicating that North Korea planned to send 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers to Russia.

Such a new slice of fighters would be more than triple the presence of infantry of North Korea in the war, against its initial lot of around 11,000 soldiers who fought for Russia in Kursk. Western estimates indicate that 6,000 of these North Korean troops were killed or injured.

Japan Times, however, reported on Sunday that Ukraine Intelligence Department (GUR) said that it had “no information” on Pyongyang plans to increase its number of troops in Russia to 30,000.

The Gur press team did not respond to a request for comments sent outside regular work hours by Business Insider.

More likely expansion is Sergei Shoigu’s additional staff, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said that North Korea had hired Kursk.

In June, Shoigu said that at least 1,000 of these people would be sappers, while 5,000 others would help construction.

Meanwhile, senior Russian officials have traveled frequently to meet Kim. According to Russian media, Shoigu visited Kim at least three times in three months at the start of the summer.

The partnership between the two increasingly isolated nations has worried South Korea and the West. Seoul, the arm of intelligence said on Sunday that he thought that Pyongyang had already provided Russia some 12 million 152 mm artillery shells, which could fill about 28,000 shipping containers.

In comparison, the United States declared in March that it had sent to Ukraine around 3 million shells of 155 mm since the start of the war in 2022.

In exchange for his troops, his ammunition and his weapons, Kim’s government would have received food, money, experience on the battlefield and technological assistance for its space and weapon programs.

Read the original article on Business Insider