In Pyongyang this weekend, one Russian official consecrated a monument to North Korean war dead. Another was putting the finishing touches on a five-year military partnership. The choreography was deliberate.

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin presided over the inauguration of a memorial complex honoring Korean troops killed fighting in Ukraine — a public consecration of blood spilled in common cause. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov sat down with Kim Jong Un to lock in a defense cooperation framework running through 2031. Images released by Russia’s Defense Ministry showed Belousov embracing Kim.

The two visits mark the transformation of a relationship that, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would have been nearly unthinkable. North Korea is no longer a sporadic arms supplier to Moscow. It is a declared military partner — one that has sent troops into combat on Russian territory, suffered significant casualties, and is now being publicly honored for it.

A Memorial and a Message

The memorial complex in Pyongyang is dedicated to North Korean soldiers killed while fighting overseas. Volodin delivered a message on behalf of President Vladimir Putin and offered unambiguous gratitude.

Volodin expressed “words of gratitude to you, esteemed Comrade Kim Jong Un, and to the Korean people for their fraternal support in the liberation of Kursk,” according to Russian state news agency TASS. “Korean soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers and officers, liberating Russian soil from the Ukrainian Nazis,” he said.

The Kursk region, in southwestern Russia, was the site of a months-long Ukrainian incursion. North Korea deployed troops there as part of a broader force that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has assessed at roughly 15,000 personnel, dispatched in multiple phases following a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty signed in June 2024.

Casualty figures are difficult to verify independently. South Korea estimated last September that approximately 2,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed. Only two have been captured alive by Ukrainian forces, and both have expressed a desire to go to South Korea, according to The Moscow Times. North Korean soldiers are reported to have been instructed to kill themselves rather than be captured.

Putin sent a telegram to Kim marking the memorial’s opening, thanking the North Korean leader and his soldiers for helping repel the Kursk incursion and expressing confidence the partnership would continue to strengthen.

The 2027–2031 Framework

While Volodin honored the dead, Belousov was securing the alliance’s next chapter. In talks with Kim and North Korean Defense Minister No Kwang Chol, Belousov announced that Moscow and Pyongyang had agreed to place their military cooperation on “a stable, long-term footing.”

“We are ready to sign a plan this year for Russian-Korean military cooperation for the period of 2027–2031,” Belousov said, according to a Russian Defense Ministry statement.

The announcement builds on the mutual defense pact signed during Kim and Putin’s June 2024 summit in Pyongyang. That treaty obligates both states to provide military assistance “without delay” in the event of an attack on the other — language reminiscent of Cold War-era alliance structures.

Belousov also presented Russian Orders of Courage to North Korean servicemen who fought in the Kursk operation. “Behind every order lies the hardest military labor, sleepless nights, and a colossal strain of spiritual and physical strength — a readiness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of accomplishing the assigned mission and saving the lives of comrades in arms,” he said.

What “long-term military cooperation” means in practice remains to be spelled out. The sources available do not detail whether the 2027–2031 framework includes joint exercises, technology transfers, or basing arrangements. Analysts cited by The Moscow Times say North Korea is already receiving financial aid, military technology, food, and energy from Russia — assistance that helps Pyongyang circumvent international sanctions over its nuclear programs.

The range of possibilities is considerable. Russian military technology — in air defense, missile guidance, or satellite systems — would represent a significant upgrade for North Korea’s conventional forces. Continued access to North Korean ammunition, artillery, and manpower could sustain Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. And the mutual defense clause raises the further possibility that a conflict on the Korean Peninsula could draw Russia in directly.

Symbols of Alignment

The visits carried symbolic weight beyond the military agreements. A separate Russian delegation led by Internal Affairs Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev toured the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence vessel seized by North Korea in 1968 and displayed in Pyongyang as a trophy, according to The Korea Herald. The ship remains commissioned by the US Navy; a federal court ordered North Korea to pay $2.3 billion in damages to the crew and their families in 2022.

For Russian officials to tour a captured American warship on North Korean soil is a visual neither country would have staged before 2023. Observers described the visit as underscoring the deepening alignment between Pyongyang and Moscow, as both project a shared stance against Washington.

Speculation is also growing that Kim may travel to Moscow in early May for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9. Such a visit would place Kim alongside Putin at Russia’s most important military ceremony — and further cement the alliance’s public dimension.

A New Geometry

The Russia-North Korea partnership is one vector in a broader realignment. Moscow has deepened military and economic ties with Iran, which has supplied drones and missiles for the Ukraine war. China has provided diplomatic cover and economic lifelines while maintaining a more cautious distance. Together, these relationships form a counterweight to Western security structures — not a formal bloc, but a network of convenience bound by shared opposition to US-led sanctions and alliance systems.

What makes the North Korean dimension distinctive is its directness. Unlike Iran, which has supplied weapons without deploying ground troops, North Korea has sent soldiers into combat, taken heavy losses, and emerged with a mutual defense treaty in return. The memorial in Pyongyang is the emotional corollary to the five-year defense plan: both countries are signaling that this alliance is built on more than arms sales.

Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Russia’s Communist Party, marked the weekend with a message to Kim celebrating bilateral ties that had reached “an unprecedentedly high level.” The rhetoric is standard for diplomatic exchanges between Moscow and Pyongyang. The underlying shift is not.

Three years ago, North Korea was an isolated state with few reliable military partners. Today it has a mutual defense treaty with a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council and a five-year military cooperation plan in the works. Whether the alliance holds after the Ukraine war ends is an open question. The monument in Pyongyang suggests both countries intend to find out.

Sources