Russia plans to share advanced satellite technology with North Korea after the latter provided thousands of troops for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Pyongyang has provided Moscow with more than 10,000 soldiers, artillery, and ammunition over the course of Russia’s war as the two sides have deepened their partnership.
In exchange, “Russia is providing military equipment to [North Korea]. It’s providing training,” Blinken told reporters Monday in Seoul, adding, “We believe that it has the intent to share space and satellite technology with [North Korea], and that concern is very much a focus that not only the United States but also [South Korea] and Japan.”
Space has become a concerning domain for military officials, who have warned that adversaries such as Russia and China have pursued offensive military space capabilities.
“Today, that capability gap is in our favor, but if it goes negative on us, it’s going to be a really bad day,” Gen. Michael Guetlein, the vice chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, warned last month, adding, “The adversary is quickly shrinking that gap, and we have got to change the way we approach space pretty rapidly.”
More than a thousand North Korean troops were killed or wounded in battle during the last week of December 2024, the secretary added. Russia has largely deployed the foreign troops to fight in Kursk, the Ukrainian-occupied area of Russia that Kyiv forces have held since last summer.
Following Pyongyang’s decision to provide troops to Russia, the Biden administration decided to remove its restrictions on how Ukraine uses the long-range missiles it provided to Kyiv. Previously, the U.S. had barred Kyiv from hitting targets within Russia, though in the spring of 2024, President Joe Biden opted to allow Ukrainian forces to use the missiles to targets just over the border in Russian territory, where attacks were emanating from. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been asking for the removal of the restrictions for several months, but the administration had refused until Pyongyang’s decision.
The secretary called North Korea and China “the biggest ongoing drivers that are allowing Russia to continue its aggression against Ukraine,” the latter of which has supported Russia’s defense industrial base.
“Putin may be close to reversing a decades-long policy by Russia and accepting [North Korea’s] nuclear weapons program,” the secretary added.
North Korea has declined the U.S. efforts to communicate both publicly and privately, according to Blinken.
“First, we have sought to engage [North Korea] and multiple efforts to sit down, to talk without any preconditions,” he said. “We communicated that on many occasions. We’ve done it privately, we’ve done it publicly. And the only response effectively we’ve gotten has been more and more provocative actions, including missile launches.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the military detected that North Korea fired what it believed was a medium-range ballistic missile test launch on Monday.
Russia has also received military support from Iran during the war, forming a quartet of anti-U.S. and anti-Western governments who have formed partnerships to advance their military capabilities.
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Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea have increased their cooperation with one another but not to the extent the U.S. does with its own allies, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month.
“We don’t see them as a four-part alliance or something along those lines,” she said. “What we are seeing, without question, is increased cooperation on a bilateral and sometimes trilateral level.”