"... Putin is the only leader in this world that begs for North Korea's help?"
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is telling things as they are: for the 2nd time in this war, Putin had to beg North Korea for help, because he cannot handle the Ukrainian advance.
The 1st time was in 2024 when Ukraine invaded part of Russia’s Kursk region, taking positions all the way to a wide river, which served as the natural barrier holding up Russian/North Korean troops.
At that time, Russia was unable to free the area, even with the help of North Korea—they could only push the Ukrainians back half a year later, with the help of Donald Trump (the U.S. switched off intel sharing that left the Ukrainian troops blind; some allege the Russians also got intel about the Ukrainian troops location; this is the story linked to Trump’s tales about “thousands of Ukrainians surrounded by Russia in Kursk”—which were fictitious, of course, as the Ukrainian troops managed to evacuate, but the situation was dire indeed).
The North Koreans were arriving with their own commanders, equipment, and munitions.
Now, as the Ukrainian forces are pushing the Russian troops at most directions (Russia is only having some gains at the Kostyantynivka area, slowly capturing ruins of a city they destroyed with artillery and glide bombs), Putin’s generals had to tell him they were struggling and needed help—and had to beg North Korea for help again.
We hear reports that North Korean troops are being moved to be used in the war against Ukraine again.
But if the last time the North Koreans were engaged on the internationally recognized territory of Russia in the Kursk region (Ukraine captured Russian territory to show the world that Putin’s “red lines” were fiction, and he wouldn’t start throwing nukes, no matter what happens on the battlefield)—this time, they would have to be engaged on the territory of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
That’s already a completely different story, in terms of geopolitics.
Surprisingly, the Russian "patriots" don’t find it humiliating that Putin is the only leader in this world that begs for North Korea's help, as president Zelenskyy pointed out in his open letter to Putin: “We brought the war onto your territory, and you would not have been able to cope with it without North Korea's help,” referring to 2024 episodes.
But the Russian “patriots” do find humiliating that Russia is struggling to subdue Ukraine for 4.5 years—and the level of Russian losses, nearing 1.4 million, leaves them in despair.
The recent Ukrainian tactic of burning down Russia’s supply lines (hundreds of trucks are destroyed by drones daily) is working: the Russian soldiers in trenches are hungry, thirsty, have no munitions or medical supplies, and the number of Russian battlefield captives is sharply increasing—the soldiers have no option to survive except surrender.
The Russian “Z-patriots” who are reporting on the war from safe positions way beyond the front lines know about that (they have contacts in the troops), and this is what they find humiliating.
Sending North Koreans to fight instead?
They fully support it.
They would prefer some other nations to fight for them.
The Russian “patriots” consider themselves too valuable to be fighting on the battlefield. The first troops sent to fight the Ukrainian army in Donbas in 2022 were Donbas natives, whom Russia forcibly mobilized—the young men from cities on the occupied territory, whom the Kremlin had been brainwashing for 8 years, since 2014.
They sent the mobilized brainwashed Ukrainians to fight against the regular Ukrainian army, and told the world it was “a civil war”—they didn’t even add these battlefield losses as the losses of the Russian army.
When Putin announced forcible mobilization in Russia in September 2022 (as Ukraine made massive gains, re-capturing territory occupied by Russia), most men were mobilized from remote regions of the Russian Federation—massively in autonomous national republics with non-Russian population. Those were the territories that Muscovy subdued centuries ago—but some, like Tuva, were taken over by Russia in WW2.
The war in Ukraine is a genocidal war against the Ukrainian nation (which according to Putin “doesn’t exist”: Putin claims that Ukrainians are actually Russians, so Ukraine must be part of Russia)—but Putin also turned it into the genocide of smaller nations living on the territory of Russia, excessively sending men from national minorities to the war.
The “Russian patriots” have no problem with that. They want to be the masters, not the cannon fodder. They think Putin is geopolitical genius for doing that.
And if Russia managed to subdue Ukraine, you know what they would do: they would send the Ukrainians to fight against Europeans. That’s what Russia does. And repopulate their land with Russians—that’s what they are already doing in cities like Mariupol, where they brought 100,000 migrants from Russia, to replace the Ukrainians who died under the ruins of their homes during the 3-month siege.
Putin’s ideologists still dream of Russia being the dominant global military power by 2050. They say it openly.
Discounting their imperial dreams would be a mistake. Yes, Russia is getting weaker—but if Europe allows Russia to take a breather and recuperate, they’ll come in full force again, trying to impose their imperial vision.
Putin’s regime is like cancer.
It needs to be dealt with accordingly.
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