A battalion of 3,000 North Korean soldiers will shortly join Russian troops in fighting Ukraine, marking Pyongyang’s full entry into the war.

Intelligence sources said the unit has been secretly training in Russia’s Far East ahead of deployment as part of a Russian airborne regiment.

“They are called the Buryat Battalion,” a senior Ukrainian military source told Politico. Buryatia is a remote region of Russia bordering Mongolia that the Kremlin has targeted heavily for military recruitment.

The Kyiv Independent quoted another Western intelligence source claiming that North Korea had sent 10,000 soldiers to join the Russian army.

(…)

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    The great Russian army. The great russian army with the best weapons and tanks and soldiers.

    What a paper tiger.

    BTW it’s rumored that they are running out of both tanks and bmps. If trump doesn’t win (if he does, it will just take longer) the whole russia will collapse like the soviet union did in 1991. The ruble is already in free fall, inflation at 20%, the economy is overheating and fewer and fewer young people left to work or be killed.

    I just hope it crumbles as soon as possible but I guess this insane war has to drag on for some 6 months to a year.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I mean you list all of that and ignore the biggest elephant in the room. 40% GDP spent on the war.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Or more.

        Just to be clear, the war economy will hasten the downfall of Russia (they no longer publish inflation numbers, rumours are they are way over 20% maybe even at 40%. The central bank is already lending at 19% which is crazy) but it won’t help much with tanks and btrs, as the vast majority of the “new” ones are refurbished ones pulled out from long time storage, and even the “bad” ones are drying up, it’s impossible to know but it could be the end of both tanks & btrs this month or next month or so.

        Russia builds just a handfull (less than 10) every month, they almost lose that many every day.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      14 hours ago

      BTW it’s rumored that they are running out of both tanks and bmps.

      I feel like people have been saying this for about 2 years. We should believe it when we see it.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        We do see it lol. There are people who get satellite photos of tankyards in Russia. They pay Google to take a new photo over a specific base, count the tanks, armored vehicles and trucks, and make a youtube video about it. Russia is losing an enormous amounts of tanks. They can’t retrofit enough of the old stock to keep up with the losses, let alone produce new tanks.

      • DerGottesknecht@feddit.org
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        13 hours ago

        Look Up covert cabal on YouTube. He works together with a guy called himarsed to painstakingly count tanks, bumps and other stuff on commercial satellite imagery and regularly posts updates on the Russian arsenals. And they are pretty empty now

    • realitista@lemm.ee
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      15 hours ago

      Dictatorships can take a lot of abuse before falling apart. Look at North Korea. People are starving and still that fuckers in power.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        Dictatorships only stand because of the military. The military which is currently being slaughtered en masse in a war they didn’t need. We are one week “where decades happen” away from Russia colapsing. Shit like Prigozin, like Kadyrov launching a blood feud, etc.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          Predictions of Russia’s collapse are like predictions that Putin’s health is about to fail: a dime a dozen on the Internet for years now and nothing ever comes of them.

          • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
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            6 hours ago

            That’s true, however it become clearer and clearer that some serious damage is happening to Russia and Putin. I don’t dare to make any predictions, but Putin is in a very uncomfortable position right now.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            And yet shit like Prigozin happens. The fall of the Soviet Union was also sudden.

        • realitista@lemm.ee
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          13 hours ago

          As long as they can find soldiers and equipment somewhere and the economy doesn’t completely collapse, they can keep going. It will get harder every year but I think it could still go on for years more.