As North Korea-Russia Relations Improve, Country Might Send Labor To Russian-Occupied Ukraine

As North Korea becomes one of the few countries to recognize the Russia-occupied Donbas region in Ukraine as a separate state, an ambassador for Russia on Monday posed the idea of North Korean laborers working in the region to help rebuild the war-torn region.

Russian Ambassador Alexander Matsegora said that he believes that a lot of cooperation between North Korea and the Russia-occupied Donbas could happen in the future as cooperation between the two states, according to NK News.

“First of all, highly qualified and hardworking Korean builders, who are capable of working in the most difficult conditions, could help us restore our social, infrastructure and industrial facilities destroyed by the retreating Ukrainian Nazis,” he said, reiterating a disproven claim about Nazis in Ukraine used to justify the war in the beginning.

Matsegora also said that an exchange of hardware and materials could also happen between the two countries, touting the heavy engineering plants and spare parts made in the region that North Korea could use.

“Our Korean partners are interested in purchasing spare parts and units manufactured in Donbas and reconstructing their production facilities,” he said.

If that were to occur, it would be a violation of U.N. sanctions against North Korea that Russia helped put into place where Pyongyang would not be allowed to send workers to other countries nor import and purchase industrial machinery, electronic equipment, tools, spare parts, and other items, the Guardian reported.

“This would mark the first major step toward the decline of Russia from a major power to a rogue state,” analyst Go Myong-hyun said. “Once Russia violates the very sanctions it had authorized, the Security Council would be critically undermined.”

North Korea has found itself siding with Russia in its war against Ukraine, including reiterating talking points from the Kremlin regarding the false claim that biological weapons were being built by the United States in the war-torn country, Channel News Asia reported.

The relationship between Russia and North Korea may be beneficial to them, as it is a way for both countries to avoid sanctions against them.

“I can easily imagine how the North Korean workers are dispatched to Donbas — assuming that the area will remain under Russian control,” Andrei Lankov, director of Korea Risk Group said. “Since Donbas republics are not U.N. members, they can ignore sanctions with impunity.”