OPINION: The CRINK axis — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea converge in war

One name, one strategic reality

There is an acronym that has been circulating for several months in the corridors of Washington think tanks, in Atlantic Council reports, in Center for Strategic and International Studies analyses: CRINK. Four letters for four regimes — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Four dictatorships that, according to researcher Angela Stent in the Atlantic Council's Russia Tomorrow series, have drawn closer together not through shared values, but through shared grievances against the West. The distinction matters. This is not an ideological alliance in the classic sense. It is a convergence of interests, a solidarity of exclusion — and it is now translating into concrete, documented, and alarming military cooperation.

The war in Ukraine, launched by Vladimir Putin in February 2022, served as a catalyst. It revealed hidden interdependencies, forced pragmatic realignments, and transformed what had been diplomatic affinities into flows of weapons, ammunition, training, and technology. This opinion piece attempts to map what is known — and only what is known — about this operational convergence.

I do not use the word "alliance" lightly. An alliance implies mutual obligations, collective defense mechanisms, shared institutions. What these four countries form looks more like an ad hoc mutual support network — opportunistic, fragile in its foundations, but real in its effects on the Ukrainian battlefield. And that alone is enough to pose a serious problem.

Pyongyang's ammunition: a million reasons to worry

The best-documented fact of the CRINK convergence concerns cooperation between Russia and North Korea. According to data compiled by multiple governments and analysts, Pyongyang has delivered more than one million artillery shells and more than 100 ballistic missiles to Moscow since transfers began in 2023. These figures, cited by American and South Korean intelligence services, make North Korea one of Russia's main ammunition suppliers in its war against Ukraine. The logic for Pyongyang is straightforward: foreign currency, military technology in return, and above all, a signal that its partnership with Moscow carries tangible value.

The return on investment for Pyongyang: technology in exchange for ammunition

In return, Russia provides North Korea with what Pyongyang has coveted for decades: advanced military expertise, and potentially technologies linked to missile and satellite programs. This trade in military competencies, between two internationally sanctioned states, operates outside any legal international framework and represents a direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions — which Russia now systematically blocks at the UN.

One million shells. That figure is not a geopolitical footnote — it represents Ukrainian lives. Every North Korean shell that lands on a Ukrainian position is tangible proof that this war is no longer merely a Russian invasion: it is a proxy war of the CRINK axis against a democracy that is holding the line. Ukraine is holding. But it is holding against several opponents at once.

DPRK troops on European soil

Beyond ammunition, the CRINK convergence crossed a qualitative new threshold: the deployment of North Korean soldiers on Ukrainian territory and in Russia's Kursk region. Western intelligence estimates — and Ukrainian confirmations — put the figure at approximately 12,000 North Korean soldiers deployed by Pyongyang in support of the Russian army. Some fought in the battles of Kursk, the theater of a bold Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2024. Their presence on a European theater of operations, within a recognized conflict, is a first since the Korean War — and a signal that the geographical boundaries of the CRINK axis are no longer abstract.

What North Korean soldiers bring back to Pyongyang

For Kim Jong-un's regime, this military participation represents both a real-conditions test for its troops and a precious bargaining chip. North Korean soldiers return with combat experience that Pyongyang cannot acquire anywhere else. For Moscow, these troops partially compensate for the massive human losses sustained since 2022 — estimated by Western sources at more than 500,000 killed and wounded on the Russian side.

I paused at that figure: 12,000. Twelve thousand North Korean soldiers in Europe. Not in the Pacific. In Europe. Two years ago, that would have seemed to belong to geopolitical fiction. Today, it is no longer an analyst's projection — it is documented field data. And if we do not say so clearly, we allow the idea to take hold that this is normal. It is not normal.

The secret training of Russian soldiers in China

China's contribution to the Russian war machine is more discreet, but potentially more strategic. According to a Reuters investigation published on May 19, 2026, China secretly trained approximately 200 Russian military personnel on its soil in late 2025, and some of those soldiers subsequently returned to fight in Ukraine. This information, picked up notably by the Kyiv Independent, represents — if confirmed in its details — a significant crossing of the line that Beijing had claimed to maintain: that of operational neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict.

Dual-use components and the circumvention economy

China also provides Russia with industrial capacity, economic scale, and technological resources that allow Moscow to circumvent the effects of Western sanctions. Exports of dual-use components — semiconductors, military electronics — have been documented by American and European governments. Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun called in January 2026 for "strengthening strategic coordination" with Russia — a diplomatic formulation that, in context, leaves little ambiguity about the intent.

Beijing officially maintains it is not a party to the conflict. But training soldiers of an army at war, supplying them with components that end up in missiles, and strategically coordinating with Moscow — at what point does the word "neutrality" cease to have meaning? I raise the question without a definitive answer. Because the answer must come from policy, not from the columnist.

The Shahed and their Russo-Chinese evolutions

Iran's contribution to the CRINK axis is most visible on Ukrainian radar screens: the Shahed-136 drones, converted under the Russian name Geran-2, have been used by the tens of thousands since 2022 to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. But the cooperation does not stop at delivering a finished product. Western analysts and intelligence reports describe tests of systems jointly developed by Russian, Iranian, and potentially Chinese engineers — a technological convergence in real time, on the front lines of a European war.

Iran as an exporter of technological instability

Tehran draws several advantages from this relationship: revenue, a partnership with two nuclear powers, and a global demonstration of its drone capabilities — which strengthens its position as a vendor to other unstable regional actors. The CRINK convergence is not only military within the Ukrainian conflict: it creates an ecosystem of technological proliferation that extends far beyond this particular war.

Iranian drones over Kyiv, shaped with Chinese technologies, launched from Russian positions — there is something vertiginous about that sentence. It summarizes what "hybrid warfare" means in 2026: not a staff-room fiction, but a nightly reality for Ukrainian civilians who hear the engines in the dark.

The UN Security Council as a blocking tool

The CRINK convergence also plays out in diplomatic arenas. Moscow and Beijing coordinate their votes at the United Nations Security Council to block or dilute resolutions unfavorable to their interests. Since 2022, Russia has used its veto multiple times to prevent measures against its invasion of Ukraine. China voted with Russia or abstained on most key votes — a posture of implicit support that legally does not commit Beijing but, politically, shields Moscow.

Dismantling multilateral control mechanisms

This coordination extends to international non-proliferation bodies, where Russia has blocked the renewal of sanctions committees targeting North Korea — thereby allowing Pyongyang to continue its arms transfers without formal international oversight. This methodical dismantling of multilateral control mechanisms is one of the most durable contributions of the CRINK convergence to the destabilization of the international order.

International institutions can only function if permanent Security Council members play by the rules. When two of them — Russia and China — use those institutions as tools of systematic obstruction, the problem is no longer only geopolitical. It is structural. And to that, the West does not yet have a clear answer.

The Russia Tomorrow series and the concept of "shared grievances"

The contribution of researcher Angela Stent — in her report published in the Atlantic Council's Russia Tomorrow series in autumn 2025 — is to have placed precise words on a reality that many Western capitals had been avoiding naming clearly. The four countries are united, she argues, not by common values, but by shared grievances. That conceptual shift is important: it means this convergence does not need a common ideology to be durable. It needs only a common enemy — the liberal West and its rules-based international order.

The strategic recommendation: a command for Northeast Asia

This analysis aligns with the work of the National Bureau of Asian Research published in June 2026 in their report on extended deterrence in the Indo-Pacific: the United States and its allies must rethink their security architectures to account not for a single threat, but for a convergence of threats that mutually reinforce one another. The core recommendation: establish a dedicated US command for Northeast Asia, capable of coordinating responses to cross-cutting provocations from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

I read these reports and always wonder how much time passes between a serious think tank publishing a recommendation and an effective political decision. On this file, every month of delay has a measurable cost in delivered ammunition, in trained soldiers, in shared technologies. The urgency is not rhetorical. It is documented.

Divergent interests beneath the surface

Analytical honesty requires noting what the CRINK convergence is not. It is not a formal alliance with mutual defense obligations. Beijing is not obligated to defend Moscow if it is attacked. Tehran and Pyongyang have their own calculations and their own red lines. The four countries share an adversary — but they also have internal rivalries, competing interests in certain regions, and a historical wariness that current circumstances have not erased. China, in particular, closely watches any excessive Russian dependency on it — a relationship that is too asymmetric would be less advantageous to Beijing than a weakened but autonomous Russian partner.

Levers the West is not yet using

These internal tensions do not reduce the short-term danger — but they offer potential levers for a more sophisticated Western diplomacy. Particularly toward China: Beijing has major economic interests in Europe and the West that the continued military convergence with Moscow directly threatens. That leverage is real. The question is whether Western democracies have the political coherence needed to use it.

I always resist the temptation to present a threat as monolithic. The CRINK axis has fractures. Beijing is not Pyongyang. Tehran has its own deeply unstable internal calculations. But resisting caricature does not mean ignoring real convergence. Both are simultaneously true. That is what makes this file difficult to simplify — and indispensable to analyze seriously.

An unexpected laboratory of military cooperation

The war in Ukraine functioned as a revealer. Before February 2022, cooperation between CRINK members was known in theory, but limited in its operational translation. Russia's large-scale invasion created a pressure of reality: Moscow had an urgent need for ammunition, troops, and technology. Pyongyang, Tehran, and to a lesser extent Beijing responded — each in their own way, each with their own risk-benefit calculation.

Tangible evidence: shells, missiles, soldiers, training

The result is that we now have concrete, verifiable documentation — shells, missiles, soldiers, training, electronic components — of what the CRINK convergence means in practice. It is no longer a strategic planning hypothesis. It is an operational reality measurable in Ukrainian losses on the eastern front, in cities struck by Shahed drones, in the battles of Kursk where soldiers from Pyongyang fought.

Ukraine has been paying the price of this convergence for four years. But what it reveals in return is precious for those who want to understand what the next war looks like before it begins. Ukrainian lessons are not only military — they are geopolitical. They show that an informal coalition of autocrats can weigh heavily against democracies that still struggle to coordinate their support.

Sanctions that are not sufficient on their own

The West's response to the CRINK convergence has essentially focused on economic sanctions against Russia and Iran, and on maintaining a sanctions regime against North Korea. These instruments are necessary — but their effectiveness is limited by the ability of CRINK members to trade among themselves and circumvent Western financial circuits. Russia is not economically isolated: it exports oil to China and India, funds its war, and imports the components it needs through roundabout channels.

Coordinating NATO and Indo-Pacific partners against a global threat

A CSIS report from June 2026 emphasizes that policy recommendations must now integrate the multilateral dimension of the threat: strengthen existing alliances, certainly, but also create new coordination mechanisms between NATO and Indo-Pacific partners such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia — who face the same actors from the other side of the globe. The CRINK convergence compels genuinely global security thinking.

We have been talking about sanctions since 2022. They slowed Russia — they did not stop it. And while we refined the sanctions lists, Pyongyang delivered shells, Tehran sent drones, and Beijing kept the Russian economy on life support. The West's problem is not the intelligence of its analysts. It is the speed of its decisions.

A front that is also a symbol

Zelensky has repeated it at every summit since 2022: what is at stake in Ukraine is not a territorial dispute between two neighbors. It is the first full-scale test of the West's capacity to defend a rules-based international order against a coalition of regimes that explicitly rejects that order. The Iranian drones, the North Korean shells, the Chinese training of Russian soldiers, the Russian blocking at the Security Council with Chinese backing — each element is a piece of the same strategy: weaken Ukraine to demonstrate that the West cannot protect what it claims to defend.

What Ukrainian resistance demands from democracies

Ukrainian resilience since 2022 has largely contradicted this calculation. But the resistance of a people, however heroic, cannot indefinitely compensate for gaps in Western coordination. What the Ukrainian front reveals, in the negative space, is the urgency of a response to the CRINK convergence that is itself convergent — democracies speaking with one voice, arming and funding with consistency, and understanding that every dollar or euro invested in Ukraine is one that prevents a more costly conflict elsewhere.

I am weary of debates about aid fatigue. The fatigue is real — I do not deny it. But the cost of aid fatigue is infinitely lower than the victory of a coalition of autocrats who would have proved that democratic resistance does not hold. That simple calculation should be enough to maintain support. It should. It is not always the case. And that is where the real danger lies.

Taiwan, Korea, Japan — the potential next fronts

Analysts at the Small Wars Journal and the National Bureau of Asian Research raise an uncomfortable observation: the military cooperation tested in Ukraine between Russia and North Korea directly benefits Pyongyang's military capacity — capacity that could one day be engaged in an escalation scenario in East Asia. A Kim Jong-un strengthened by operational lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine is a more dangerous actor for Seoul, Tokyo, and ultimately for American interests in the Asia-Pacific.

Taiwan in Beijing's calculations: the Ukrainian laboratory

The Taiwan dimension is even more direct: if China observes that Ukrainian resistance hardened Western responses and complicated the calculations of an invading power, it draws its own lessons on the potential cost of a forced seizure of Taiwan. The war in Ukraine is, for Beijing, a strategic laboratory as much as a cause to support. The fact that China maintains massive investments in its own military capabilities, notably naval, suggests its calculations remain open.

I am careful not to project a war that has not yet begun. Nothing says Beijing will cross the Taiwan threshold. But the fact that this possibility is seriously discussed in Western strategic circles — and that CRINK cooperation strengthens all its members' capabilities — means the question is no longer hypothetical. It is in the plans. And plans change balances before they are even executed.

A systemic response to a systemic threat

Experts at the National Bureau of Asian Research recommend in June 2026 the creation of a US command for Northeast Asia — a structure that would allow coordinating responses to cross-cutting provocations from Russia, North Korea, and potentially China in a single geographic zone. This recommendation reflects a fundamental realization: you cannot address CRINK threats in silos — a response on NATO's eastern flank here, an Indo-Pacific response there — without losing sight of the convergence that unites them.

The resources exist: what is missing is coherence

The West has the resources to respond to the CRINK convergence. It has the alliances — NATO, Indo-Pacific partnerships, bilateral cooperations — and economies that collectively exceed those of all four CRINK members. What it lacks is political coherence and decisional speed to turn those resources into a unified strategic posture. The window is not closed. But it will not remain open indefinitely.

I fundamentally believe the West can win this systemic confrontation — not through brute force, but through coherence, endurance, and the solidity of its institutions. But "can" is not "will." CRINK is betting on our disunity. The best way to make it lose that bet is to show unity. That is not a call for naive optimism. It is a cold reading of the balance of forces.

NATO members playing a troubling game

No honest analysis of the Western response to the CRINK convergence can ignore the internal fissures. Erdogan's Turkey is a NATO member, but maintains commercial and diplomatic relations with Russia, hosts negotiation channels that serve Moscow's interests as much as its own, and periodically blocks Alliance decisions on critical matters. Viktor Orbán's Hungary has systematically delayed or diluted Ukraine aid packages approved by the European Union, while maintaining close economic and political relations with Putin.

Internal levers that Russia and China exploit

These cracks are not anecdotal: they give Russia and China leverage inside the very institutions the West is counting on to defend itself. They reflect an uncomfortable reality: the CRINK convergence does not need formal members inside NATO — it only needs members who do not play as a team. And those members exist.

I will not call Orbán a Kremlin agent. That is a legally loaded term I cannot support with available evidence. But it is a documented fact that he slows support to Ukraine, maintains economic and political ties with Moscow, and benefits from that position. Naming that fact is not propaganda. It is commentary.

The acronym that forces different thinking

The concept of CRINK has a value that goes beyond the academic. It compels thinking about the threat for what it is: not four separate challenges to be managed in silos, but an interdependent convergence that reinforces itself over time. Russo-North Korean cooperation nourishes Pyongyang's military capacity and Moscow's stockpiles. Chinese support allows Russia to resist sanctions. Iranian drones tested in Ukraine are marketed to other actors. Each element reinforces the others.

Systemic, coordinated, durable: the three imperatives

The response to this convergence must match its nature: systemic, coordinated, durable. It runs through support for Ukraine through to a just and verifiable peace. Through solidarity with the democracies of East Asia. Through clarity about the cost of complacency toward Beijing. And through lucidity about the Alliance's internal fissures. Naming the CRINK convergence is not alarmist — it is the first act of a serious response.

This opinion piece does not claim to have all the answers. It claims only that the questions are more urgent than is publicly acknowledged in most Western capitals. The CRINK axis is not an analyst's paranoid fiction. It is a documented, verifiable, operational convergence. And documenting the urgent is still what commentary does best.

Clarity as the first act of resistance

The CRINK convergence is an invitation to clarity. Clarity about what the West defends — democratic values, a rules-based order, the right of nations to self-determination — and clarity about the means it is willing to mobilize to defend them. That clarity is not guaranteed. It is contested from within by demagogues and populists who prefer the short term over strategic coherence, and from without by regimes betting on our fatigue.

What Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have proven since 2022

But history is not yet written. What Zelensky has shown since 2022, what Ukrainian soldiers demonstrate every day on the front, is that resistance is possible — that a determined people can hold out against a convergence of better-equipped authoritarian regimes. What is needed now is for that resistance to be backed by a Western coalition equal to the challenge. CRINK has chosen its side. The West must choose its own — without ambiguity, without delay.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

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When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.