ANALYSIS: Kim Jong Un and Russia — a military alliance threatening the West from within

Introduction: The "strongest strategic position in decades"

What U.S. intelligence is saying

According to the annual 2026 U.S. intelligence report, North Korea finds itself in its "strongest strategic position in decades." This phrase is not rhetorical — it is technical. It designates a precise state of affairs: Pyongyang has gained access, through its unprecedented cooperation with Russia, to military technologies that would have taken it years to develop on its own. In exchange, it has supplied Moscow with ammunition, missiles and soldiers that feed the war in Ukraine. This Faustian bargain between two pariah states has concrete consequences playing out simultaneously on two continents.

From June 20 to 22, 2026, the 2nd Plenum of the 9th Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) was held in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Un declared his intention to "surpass the world" in military modernization. This is not an empty slogan. It is a roadmap backed by Russian technology transfers that make this objective less absurd than it appears.

What the Russia-North Korea cooperation really changes

Russian-North Korean military cooperation is no longer a rumored back-channel. It is documented, analyzed, and now officially recognized by U.S. intelligence. Moscow has supplied Pyongyang with submarine propulsion and silencing technologies, Pantsir-M type air defense equipment, and electronic warfare systems. In return, North Korea has sent millions of artillery rounds, ballistic missiles and ground troops to the Ukrainian front. This relationship has become a technological and military feedback loop from which both parties draw immediate benefits.

The KN-23 missile: from Ukraine to Pyongyang, upgraded

The most dangerous technological loop of the moment

The most tangible and alarming result of Russian-North Korean cooperation concerns the short-range ballistic missile KN-23. Here is the documented sequence: North Korea sends KN-23 missiles to Russia. Russia uses them in Ukraine. It improves them technically. It shares those improvements with North Korea. The missiles return to Pyongyang more precise, more reliable, more formidable. This cycle has increased both the precision and the survivability of the KN-23 — two critical characteristics for a missile designed to hit military targets with reduced risk of interception.

This technology improvement loop through actual combat is what the world's armies have always sought through their exercises. North Korea is doing it in real time, in combat conditions, for free — with data collected against Ukrainian defenses and lessons drawn from the failures of initial strikes.

Russian technologies transferred: a troubling catalog

Beyond the KN-23, U.S. intelligence has documented additional Russian technology transfers to North Korea: submarine propulsion and noise-reduction technologies, enabling Pyongyang to develop far less detectable submarines; Pantsir-M type air defense equipment, with one system observed aboard a North Korean destroyer; electronic warfare systems that enhance jamming and radar-blinding capabilities. Each transfer fills gaps that Pyongyang would have taken years to close on its own.

The June 2026 plenum: Kim announces his intentions

"Surpass the world": an objective taken seriously

The 2nd Plenum of the 9th Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party, held from June 20 to 22, 2026, was the occasion for Kim Jong Un to publicly formulate a military modernization objective unprecedented in his previous declarations: "surpass the world." In the context of the U.S. intelligence report and the documented Russian technology transfers, this declaration carries particular resonance.

Kim's rhetoric is not new when it comes to bluster. But when that rhetoric is backed by technologies that have actually been transferred, when the missiles are actually improved, when the submarines will soon be genuinely less detectable — the gap between words and reality narrows. North Korea's exercise of nuclear rights is, according to Kim, "the only way to deal with an unpredictable and complicated global security situation." It is also a way of saying: we will not disarm.

Denuclearization: an effectively abandoned objective

The annual U.S. intelligence report and analyses by experts such as the FDD (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) are clear: "international efforts to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program have failed."North Korea will not disarm voluntarily — neither under sanctions pressure, nor under diplomatic pressure, nor through anyone's mediation. It has chosen the nuclear path as a guarantee of regime survival, and no economic or diplomatic incentive has managed to make it change course in 30 years.

North Korean troops in Ukraine: in-vivo military skills transfer

Soldiers trained in real combat

Military cooperation is not limited to technologies. North Korea has sent ground troops to support the Russian army in Ukraine. These soldiers, trained in the conditions of modern warfare — drones, electronic warfare, urban combat, long-range artillery — will return to Pyongyang with combat experience that no training program can replace. For an army that has not fought since the Korean War (1950–1953), this is a considerable operational advantage.

These battlefield lessons will be integrated into North Korean military doctrine, training programs, and the tactics of special units. North Korea is observing how Russian forces use drones, how Ukrainians counter tanks, how attritional warfare plays out under modern conditions. This knowledge has immense strategic value for a country that is planning, at minimum, the defense of its regime against possible intervention.

North Korean ammunition in the shells falling on Kyiv

The flow runs in both directions. Millions of North Korean cannon rounds and rockets feed Russian guns on the Ukrainian front. North Korean artillery pieces have been photographed in combat zones. KN-23 ballistic missiles have struck Ukrainian cities. This massive material support has helped sustain Russia's rate of fire at a level that domestic industry alone could not have maintained for this long. North Korea has become Moscow's reserve arsenal — and that has direct consequences, in Ukrainian lives lost, every week.

Iran in the equation: drones and missiles for Moscow

The third partner in the revisionist triangle

Iran completes the picture. Since 2022, it has supplied Russia with hundreds of Shahed drones that have struck Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. These drones, relatively cheap to produce, have allowed Russia to saturate Ukrainian defenses and exhaust interceptor ammunition stocks. Russia, in return, has shared aeronautical technologies with Iran and strengthened its military cooperation with Tehran.

This triangle — Russia, North Korea, Iran — is an alliance of convenience rather than ideology. Their regimes do not share the same doctrine, the same ambitions, or the same immediate enemies. But they share a structural common objective: weakening the West and its institutions — NATO, the UN, international financial institutions, international law norms. This tactical convergence is sufficient to make them dangerously effective together.

What China is not doing, but enabling

China is not directly supplying weapons to Russia — at least not officially. But it maintains trade relations that allow Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions. It supplies dual-use components. It absorbs Russian oil at reduced prices, injecting currency into the besieged Russian economy. Without this silent economic support, Russia's capacity to continue the war — and to finance its technology transfers to Pyongyang and Tehran — would be significantly reduced. China is not a co-belligerent, but it is an indispensable enabler.

Strategic implications for the West

A triangle of instability: Moscow-Pyongyang-Tehran

The Russia-North Korea cooperation does not stop at their shared borders. It is part of a broader triangle of instability that includes Iran. The three countries share one objective: eroding the West's capacity to maintain international order. Russia does it in Ukraine. Iran does it by supporting proxies in the Middle East. North Korea does it by supplying ammunition to Russia, testing missiles that can no longer be called purely defensive, and developing submarine capabilities that threaten American naval dominance in the western Pacific.

This triangle of instability also benefits indirectly from the diplomatic and economic support of China, which has refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine and continues to maintain commercial exchanges with Pyongyang and Tehran despite international sanctions. China is not a partner in this alliance — but it is its silent economic infrastructure.

What the West must do — and is not doing enough

Against this buildup of power, Western responses remain insufficient. Sanctions against North Korea have been in force for decades — with zero effect on the nuclear program. The CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization) remains a declared but practically impossible objective. What the West can do more effectively today is not retry the same diplomatic recipes that have all failed — it is to strengthen the defenses of its allies in the region: Japan, South Korea, Australia — and to treat the war in Ukraine as the front line of this larger conflict with revisionist powers.

Sanctions in question: what works and what fails

Thirty years of sanctions — with what result?

International sanctions against North Korea represent one of the most systematic pressure regimes in the history of modern diplomacy. The UN Security Council has adopted multiple resolutions covering arms trade, financial transactions, oil exports, and leadership travel. The result: an active nuclear program, an increasingly capable missile program, and an army now classified by its adversary's own intelligence as in its "strongest strategic position in decades." This is not a track record that inspires confidence in sanctions as a standalone tool.

One of the fundamental reasons for this failure is precisely China and now Russia: two permanent members of the Security Council that block any tightening of sanctions and maintain the economic bypass routes essential to Kim's regime survival. As long as those two countries maintain this posture, sanctions will remain an imperfect tool — necessary, but insufficient.

What regional allies are concretely doing

Japan, South Korea and Australia have accelerated their investments in missile defense systems, long-range strike capabilities and trilateral military cooperation with the United States. These investments aim to maintain credible deterrence against a North Korea whose capabilities are improving through Russian transfers. This is the only realistic response available in the short term: not eliminating the threat, but making it too costly to exercise. Deterrence is not a victory — it is the management of a threat that has not been eliminated.

The impact on democracy and freedom in Northeast Asia

What Kim represents for his own people

Behind the missiles and military technologies, there is a North Korean people living under one of the most closed and brutal dictatorships in the world. The resources invested in Kim Jong Un's military modernization are resources taken from an economy that cannot reliably feed its own population. North Korea is a garrison state that deprives its citizens of freedom, information, and basic dignity to sustain a regime kept alive only by the threat of force.

No security policy for the Korean Peninsula can ignore this dimension. Denuclearization, if it ever arrives, will need to be accompanied by a transformation of the human rights situation in North Korea — otherwise any solution will be precarious and reversible, as all historical precedents show.

The human rights question as a diplomatic lever

One of the weaknesses of Western policy on North Korea has been treating the nuclear question and the human rights question as separate files. They are not. A regime that imprisons hundreds of thousands of its citizens in camps, that executes people for watching foreign films, that maintains totalitarian surveillance over every aspect of daily life — that regime will not disarm because it is offered economic incentives. Its survival depends on its capacity to threaten its neighbors. The bomb is the guarantee of regime survival. It will not trade that guarantee for nothing.

Conclusion: A threat that can no longer be ignored

The strongest position in decades — and it will continue

North Korea is today more dangerous than it has ever been since the end of the Cold War. That is not an opinion — it is the formal verdict of U.S. intelligence. Its missiles are more precise. Its submarines will soon be more silent. Its air defense systems are reinforced. And its leader has publicly declared his intention to "surpass the world" militarily. This reality demands a coherent, coordinated and urgent response from the West — one that recognizes the Ukrainian front and the Korean Peninsula as two theaters of the same strategic challenge.

When Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula are the same file

By helping Ukraine resist and prevail, the West reduces Russia's capacity to technologically support North Korea. By weakening the Russian economy, it reduces Moscow's ability to finance those transfers. By holding firm in Kyiv, it sends a signal to Beijing about the cost of a military adventure against a sovereign neighbor. These connections are not theoretical — they are the most solid strategic logic available to the West in 2026.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My position and my biases

I am Maxime Marquette, columnist and analyst. I consider North Korea, Russia, Iran and China genuine threats to international stability. This editorial bias is openly held. The facts reported in this article come from documented sources: the 2026 U.S. intelligence report, analyses from the FDD, and other cited sources. No fact was invented.

What I don't know

I do not have access to the classified details of the U.S. intelligence report. Estimates of North Korea's technical capabilities are inferences based on public observations. The exact scope of Russian technology transfers remains partially unknown. I have reported what is documented and publicly acknowledged.

Sources

Primary sources

Morung Express — North Korea in strongest strategic position in decades, U.S. intel report — June 25, 2026

FDD — Kim pushes for faster North Korean defense buildup with Russia's help — June 25, 2026

The Conversation — International efforts to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program have failed — 2026

Secondary sources

19FortyFive — Analysis of North Korean and geopolitical threats — July 2026

Foreign Policy — Coverage of the Korean Peninsula — July 2026

CSIS Korea Chair — Capital Cable: analysis of the Korean Peninsula — July 2026

The Guardian — International coverage of North Korea — July 2026