Lavrov in Pyongyang: a sign Russia urgently needs more North Korean troops?

Russia’s appeals to North Korea for military manpower have taken on new urgency with Sergey Lavrov’s weekend trip to Pyongyang.

The Russian foreign minister’s visit, his first to the North Korean capital since 2009, signalled Moscow’s growing reliance on its neighbour for troops and engineering support, analysts say – suggesting that Kim Jong-un’s regime could now send more soldiers, “in more direct combat roles”, to shore up the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

“Russia may also count on North Korean combat engineers in a potential Dnieper River-crossing operation to seize Kherson,” Doo Jin-ho, a senior researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Security, told This Week in Asia.

At a press conference on Saturday, Lavrov made no secret that Moscow would welcome further North Korean military involvement in the war, saying that if Pyongyang offered to send more troops, Russia would have “no reasons to decline this sincere act of solidarity”.

He added that Pyongyang would “determine the forms in which” the two sides implemented the strategic defence treaty they signed last year, according to a Russian foreign ministry statement.