Putin is running out of men to stuff into the meat grinder. Korean drone-bait can’t save him

With dramatic photographs now available of the first confirmed North Korean prisoners of war in Ukraine, one must wonder at the effectiveness of this support to Putin by Kim Jong Un. The published photographs will do the poor souls featured no favours; like Stalin before him, Kim has no time or value for those who are captured. Their families will be trembling in fear back home.

The reinforcement from North Korea has come at an important time for Putin. His own military has been ground down with horrendous casualties and he has exhausted the prison population. The foreign fighter schemes in the Subcontinent of Asia and Latin America are drying up, as word spreads that it is a one-way journey. Both sides are pushing for the best position ahead of the much-anticipated Trump ceasefire and Putin will use these expendables as human capital to get into the best place he can ahead of the peace talks. He has always tried to avoid sending too many ethnic Russians from Moscow and St Petersburg into the meat grinder. He is coming to the end of his current supplies of manpower, even with the fresh Korean reinforcements, and he will probably welcome an excuse for at least a temporary ceasefire.

Putin’s need is obvious. So, what’s in it for Kim? First, he is conscious that his military has never really been tested. Kim knows that his army needs combat experience. The plan saves him money, too. He does not have to feed the soldiers he sends to the war, and there are dire food shortages at home. Kim is also paid well for each soldier, and he is receiving crucial military and technical assistance from Russia. The deployment also send sends a message to President Xi of China: North Korea has other allies, you are not the only one.

The potential disadvantages will be well known to Kim, too. Once the troops experience life outside the Hermit Kingdom, the situation at home may no longer look impressive. We already know that internet pornography had a devastating impact on the Korean soldiers, for instance. On their return from their time abroad, Kim will wonder how reliable they are. Once again, shadows of Stalin emerge. He never trusted his military who spent time with the Western Allies in WWII and many were purged – or eliminated – on return to the USSR. This will also not be lost on the benighted troops, who will be making sure that their every word and even scribblings in their private diaries show slavish loyalty to Kim. They will be watched by comrades and commissars, who will, in turn, be watched.

As for the effectiveness of the North Koreans, the emerging picture is that the Russians, underwhelmed by the new troops, are increasingly using them as cannon fodder, human mine detectors and even drone bait in the race for the finish line. The fact that so few have been captured or surrendered suggests that the latent menace and fear of Kim is effective too.

It is a human tragedy of course, but so is all war. Few know what form the Trump-brokered peace will take but many on the Ukrainian side fear that it will only be a pause. They will use the time to rebuild as best they can. Putin will use it to rebuild his war machine.

Will we in the West use that time wisely too? If this leads to an interbellum period, as the Versailles Treaty did, what must we do?

I would suggest that the best way to keep the war at an end would be to spend a larger portion of our collective GDP in order to send a clear message to Putin, that he can never catch up with Nato’s collective spending power.  If we fail to send that message, we can be certain that the threat, next time, will not be limited to Ukraine.

Colonel Tim Collins is a former British Army officer who served with the SAS and as commander of the Royal Irish during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when his before-battle speech to his soldiers made headlines around the world