Dangerous troop ties in evil axis

US confirmation that Vladimir Putin has resorted to the deployment of 10,000 troops from the manic state of North Korea to help fight his war against democratic Ukraine should sound alarm bells not just across Europe but also in our own Indo-Pacific region.

As NATO’s new secretary-general, former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, said on Tuesday, the deepening military co-operation between Russia and Kim Jong Un’s oppressive, nightmare regime in Pyongyang poses “a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security”.

Bilateral co-operation between two countries does not come closer than deploying troops from another country to help fight the wars of a host country. But that is what Putin is effectively doing, with US reports indicating that North Korean forces, with their dreadful reputation for savage oppression and disregard for human rights, have already been sent to Russia’s forward Kursk region where, two months ago, Ukraine captured a large swath of Moscow’s territory.

Such, however, is Putin’s desperation 33 months into his abortive “special military operation”, which was projected to overrun Ukraine in just a few days after it was launched. Instead, new intelligence estimates are that the Russian despot’s blundering onslaught has so far killed or wounded more than 600,000 of his own troops (115,000 Russians killed and 500,000 wounded), while Ukraine is believed to have lost 57,500 of its troops, with 250,000 wounded.

Such is the toll taken by Putin’s madcap military miscalculation, and his consequent need to seek help from the deranged North Korean tyrant, who has also been supplying Moscow with desperately needed ammunition to supplement the Russian army’s seriously depleted stocks.

The deployment is further proof of the strategic ties being forged in an axis against the West involving China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

For Kim, North Korean boots on the ground in Ukraine open up the prospect of even closer co-operation with Moscow, especially to gain the nuclear technology that Russia has and the Pyongyang regime needs to achieve its nuclear ambitions. That prospect should be of profound concern to countries across the Indo-Pacific, especially those such as Japan and South Korea, which are immediate targets for North Korea’s aggression.

No less worrying should be the prospect for European nations that marauding North Korean troops in the service of Kim’s savage tyranny will now be in the vanguard of Putin’s colonialist assault aimed at overrunning Ukraine as the first stage in re-creating the former Soviet empire.

The message for Indo-Pacific and European democracies alike from the appearance of the North Korean fighters on Ukraine’s battlefields could not be clearer: it is, as Mr Rutte said, the sign of a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war and makes it even more imperative that the world’s democracies do not allow Putin to gain the victory he seeks over Ukraine. They must not fall for the crackpot isolationist views of those such as Donald Trump, as he seeks to return to the White House, when he expresses admiration for despots such as Putin and Kim.

The argument heard frequently in Australia, that Ukraine is “Europe’s problem”, was always fallacious; it is even more so now.

Putin’s resort to deployment of North Koreans, and what that means in terms of closer co-operation between Moscow and Pyongyang, underlines the reality that democracies in our region have no less a stake than Europe in doing what’s needed to help Kyiv ensure the Russian tyrant is vanquished.

That is nowhere truer than in relation to Australia’s national interest. We must be resolute in doing whatever we can to help Ukraine defeat the Russian-North Korean “axis of evil” now operating – doubtless with Chinese and Iranian connivance – on the frontline in Ukraine.