Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disclosure recently that Russia is seeking as many as 30,000 additional North Korean troops — nearly triple Pyongyang’s earlier troop commitment — should not be read simply as another data point in a grinding European war.

Rather, it should be seen as a warning shot for the Indo-Pacific as well. According to Zelenskyy, preparations to welcome the incoming contingent commenced in June in the Russian Voronezh area. Additionally, he claimed that North Korea is planning to deliver additional ballistic missile launchers to support Russian operations. If accurate, this will represent the largest increase in collaboration between Russia and North Korea beyond mere battlefield troops.

How should we read these moves? There has been ongoing debate among officials and analysts for three years about whether Europe and the Indo-Pacific are truly “interconnected theaters,” or if this description is an exaggeration. North Korea’s preparation for deployment to Russia should end the discussion.

When one authoritarian state at war provides troops and munitions to another warring authoritarian state in exchange for technical expertise (in areas such as missile guidance, submarine technologies, satellites and combat experience), then those two regions are not only interrelated in conceptually rhetorical terms. In........

© The Japan Times