Lavrov meets Kim: Russia’s urgent bid for more troops from North Korea?

Moscow’s top diplomat capped a flurry of high-level visits to North Korea in search of more ‘allies willing to bleed’, analysts say

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gives a thumbs up as he prepares to depart from North Korea’s Wonsan Kalma Airport on Sunday. Photo: KCNA/KNS/AP

Published: 2:36pm, 14 Jul 2025Updated: 7:17pm, 14 Jul 2025

Corrected [7:02pm, 14 Jul, 2025]

[7:02pm, 14 Jul, 2025]
An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Sergey Lavrov had visited Pyongyang on Saturday. The article has been amended to reflect that Lavrov was in the coastal city of Wonsan.

Russia’s appeals to North Korea for military manpower have taken on new urgency with Sergey Lavrov’s weekend trip to the country.

The Russian foreign minister’s visit, his first to North Korea since 2009, signalled Moscow’s growing reliance on its neighbour for troops and engineering support, analysts say – suggesting that Kim Jong-un’s regime could now send more soldiers, “in more direct combat roles”, to shore up the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

“Russia may also count on North Korean combat engineers in a potential Dnieper River-crossing operation to seize Kherson,” Doo Jin-ho, a senior researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Security, told This Week in Asia.

At a press conference in the coastal city of Wonsan on Saturday, Lavrov made no secret that Moscow would welcome further North Korean military involvement in the war, saying that if Kim offered to send more troops, Russia would have “no reasons to decline this sincere act of solidarity”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (left) greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a meeting in Wonsan, North Korea, on Saturday. Photo: KCNA/EPA

He added that Pyongyang would “determine the forms in which” the two sides implemented the strategic defence treaty they signed last year, according to a Russian foreign ministry statement.

Lavrov meets Kim: Russia’s urgent bid for more troops from North Korea?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Moscow’s top diplomat capped a flurry of high-level visits to North Korea in search of more ‘allies willing to bleed’, analysts say

Moscow’s top diplomat capped a flurry of high-level visits to North Korea in search of more ‘allies willing to bleed’, analysts say