April 20, 2025: Since August 2024, Russian efforts to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk province made steady progress. Russia was so desperate that they hired 15,000 North Korean troops. The Koreans fought bravely but took heavy casualties. Eventually there were only a few hundred Ukrainian troops holding out in an ancient monastery. Russian forces were pressing on against the Ukrainians in the monastery, eventually forcing them out and back into Ukraine.

While in Russia the Ukrainians captured two of the North Korean soldiers. This was not easy because the North Koreans had been ordered by their leaders back home to kill themselves rather than be captured. Many did so, to spare their families retribution from the North Korean government.

The Ukrainians told their North Korean prisoners that they would not be identified. This would keep their families safe. In return, the North Korean prisoners would submit to questioning about the North Korean military and life in North Korea. The two soldiers revealed that they were trained more thoroughly and intensively than the Russian soldiers they worked with in Ukraine.

The two prisoners knew little about the war before being sent to fight in it. They then discovered a new world outside the very confined and restricted lives they led in North Korea. There, young men are conscripted into the army at 18 and serve up to ten years. During that time most have little or no contact with their families. Home visits are allowed only when a parent dies.

Many North Korean soldiers in Ukraine were able to obtain cell phones (most likely by trading some of their equipment for cell phones with corrupt Russian supply sergeants) and enough understanding of Russian to use the phones. This was a shocking and revealing experience. The phones enabled them to find out about a world they didn’t know existed. They were shocked to find out how different life was in prosperous and democratic South Korea. Saying that out loud in North Korea was a criminal offense that often resulted in a long and often fatal time in a labor camp. It is likely that any of these North Korean troops who return to North Korea will be put in prison camps for the rest of their lives.

Before sending the Russians mercenaries, North Korea had made a lot of money selling the Russians weapons and munitions. This included 300 short range ballistic missiles and many thousands of tons of other weapons and munitions. Russia offered to barter with the North Koreans, offering technical advice for missiles, nuclear weapons and the nuclear submarine North Korea is building.

This all began when Ukrainian forces made an unexpected raid into Russia’s Kursk province on August 2nd, 2024. By early 2025 the Ukrainian forces were still in Russia and the Russians had brought in three brigades of North Korean troops to join the effort to expel the Ukrainians. Russia paid a lot of money to the North Korean government for these brigades but the North Koreans suffered heavy casualties and failed to force the Ukrainians out of Russia.

Russian civilians in the Ukrainian occupation zone noticed the absence of Russian forces prior to the raid on Kursk. When the Ukrainians invaded, they captured several hundred soldiers as well as civilians working for the military. Most of these were subsequently used to get Ukrainian prisoners released. While the Russians responded to the prisoner swap offer, they were still not in a fighting mood. A Russian official showed up and blamed the local authorities for the Ukrainian success. At the same time he said Russian military assistance was on the way. After many months the local civilians still had not received any help from their government. In contrast the Ukrainian occupiers were friendly and did not prevent local civilians from leaving the occupied zone.

Previous to the August incursion, Ukrainian forces had advanced into Russia several times but withdrew before any Russian troops showed up. In most of those cases, there were no Russian soldiers nearby to oppose an incursion. The dwindling, from casualties and desertions, Russian forces are barely able to cover the thousand kilometer front line. Most of the fighting is going on in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces continue to gain ground in Luhansk and Donetsk provinces where the war began in 2014.

Heavy Russian losses in Ukraine since 2022 are one of the reasons Russia was unable to move many troops and armored vehicles towards Kursk. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not expect such a bold Ukrainian attack into Russia and had little to say publicly. Instead he went off on a planned visit to another part of Russia while a few troops were sent to block further Ukrainian advances. Russian media were ordered to report little or nothing about the incursion. The media did publish vague reports of something happening in Kursk province, and most Russians were more afraid of their own government than they were of Ukrainian troops inside Russia. Putin enacted laws that punished critics of his policies in Ukraine. A few Russians were sent to prison and that was sufficient to frighten most other Russian critics.

Meanwhile Putin has his own problems dealing with the invading Ukrainians. Three years of fighting in Ukraine have severely depleted the Russian armed forces. There were not enough troops available to block the Ukrainian advance in Kursk. This was what the Ukrainians expected because Ukrainian military intelligence has monitored Russian soldiers using cellphones and interviewed Russia prisoners. Ukraine knew that there were not many Russian troops left in Ukraine and Russian morale was low.

Russia has not resorted to extreme measures to motivate their soldiers. In World War II methods were used to motivate reluctant troops that Russian does not believe will work 80 years after World War II. During World War II Russia resorted to ancient traditions when deadly force was necessary to encourage reluctant Russian soldiers. In 2022 Russian officers were expected to use deadly force on their own troops in order to ensure obedience. This was often used during World War II. During some major offensives secret police personnel would be brought in to operate machine-guns behind the troops who were taking part in a major offensive. The secret police machine-gunners fired on any Russian troops leaving the front-line forces. Many nations consider desertion in the face of the enemy to be treason, but they don’t usually execute the traitorous deserters on sight.

After 2022, Russians in Ukraine found that they could not get away with using secret police methods. The troops involved shot back, or first. This meant there was no motivation to get reluctant Russian troops to move forwards. After three years fighting in Ukraine, Russian troops are often unable to motivate themselves into attacking. Even defending Russian troops would sometimes flee. The Ukrainians in Kursk were taking advantage of that and Vladimir Putin was receiving bad news he did not want to deal with.

Until some overdue reforms are made, these flaws will not go away. The fighting in Ukraine reminded Russian military and political leaders that the long delay is already working on needed reforms so, they hope, that the next time Russian troops are in combat they perform better and perhaps even win. There have been several rounds of unsuccessful military reforms since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. One of the major causes of that collapse was their unaffordable and largely ineffective armed forces. In post-Soviet Russia there are far fewer restrictions on criticizing the military. Most Russians have a very negative attitude towards conscription and the reforms underway because of the Ukraine War disaster are typical of several previous efforts to remedy problems that continue to resist any fundamental change.