1,000 days of war: Is the Russia-Ukraine conflict going nuclear?

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – As their war hit the grim mark of 1,000 days, Russia and Ukraine have entered a new phase of dangerous and potentially nuclear escalation.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has given Kyiv something it long sought – permission to use American-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

Moscow responded by upgrading its nuclear doctrine, with one of the key changes being that an attack by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power will be treated as a joint assault.

While Washington has yet to officially confirm the Biden administration’s major policy shift, new US media reports say it has also approved the shipment of anti-personnel mines to bolster Kyiv’s defenses.

These developments have played out rapidly since reports started emerging over the past few weeks about the alleged deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia’s advances.

South Korea, a key US ally, was the first to draw attention to Pyongyang’s involvement, while Washington and NATO later backed its claims.

Neither Russia nor North Korea have confirmed or denied the claims, but the two recently elevated bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement, allowing mutual military aid in case of aggression by a third party.

All of this also happened in the backdrop of the Nov. 5 US elections, where Republicans seized power from the Democratic Party, and Donald Trump – who has vowed to end the Ukraine war – took the White House.

- Road to escalation or dialogue?

Trump’s return will be a major factor in how the situation evolves, to the point where it could even change the course from a dreaded nuclear conflict to actual negotiations, according to Simon Schlegel, senior Ukraine analyst at the International Crisis Group.

With the new developments, Moscow is framing the Ukraine conflict as a “direct confrontation between Russia and the US” and can be expected to “use more of this rhetoric,” Schlegel told Anadolu.

This could, he continued, prove to be a “good way to lay ground work” for direct talks between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It is “a good way to say that this is a conflict that Russia is directly engaged in with the US and with NATO, and then would lay ground work to argue that in case of negotiations they would want to speak to Washington directly, which is something Putin has been looking for a while,” said Schlegel.

Putin is “really interested in talking to Washington, especially when Donald Trump is president there” and has no particular interest in speaking to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he added.

However, he said Moscow “definitely” sees the recent US moves as an escalation, “although it has been quite clear for a while that this step will come.”

“They (Russians) might try to answer it with further aggressive steps which very likely do not include the use of, or very serious threatening with nuclear weapons,” he said.

Kyiv’s use of long-range missiles “could be quite painful for the Russians,” who will have to “protect their logistics network much better,” he said.

“They will suffer some damage, but probably they will not suffer damage that will shift the balance of the war.”

- Cold War turning into World War III?

Any official confirmation of the presence of North Korean troops would mark the first time that any Asian country has become involved in a war since the Sino-Vietnamese border conflict of 1979, according to Jingdong Yuan, a senior academic at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Pyongyang’s dispatch of troops would be a “quite extraordinary” development and “presumably driven by the bilateral agreement and commitments” made during Putin’s visit to North Korea in June, he said.

For North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, he said, the objective would be to show a “level of closeness” with Russia, while also helping his troops “experience and earn real combat lessons … which will be useful for any future military conflict with South Korea.”

For Putin, North Korea sending troops gives him “some of the legitimacy that he is scrambling for, especially given the overwhelming (Western) support to Ukraine,” said Jingdong.

“The Ukraine war is expanding with Ukrainian troops entering and occupying Russian territories, and with gradual permission by the US for its weapons to be used in combat, both defensively and offensively ... This is unfortunate and can be dangerous because of risks of further escalation,” he said.

Leonid Petrov, a senior academic and expert on North Korea at the International College of Management in Australia, pointed out that Pyongyang’s involvement in the Ukraine war is starkly different from its previous actions in support of Russia.

“This is the first time that North Korea has dispatched abroad a massive contingent of troops,” he told Anadolu.

“Previously, they were limited by small groups of military and technical advisers. This was the case in Africa in the 1980s and in the Middle East in the 1990s and more recently. Apparently, (North Korean) relationships with Putin’s Russia are becoming very special these days.”

He sees clear lines being drawn across the globe, warning that the divisions could lead to major escalation.

“We live in the times of new Cold War, which is quickly turning into World War III. The old ideological bloc system (communism vs. capitalism) is turning into a new opposition of dictatorships vs. democracy,” he said.

“North Korea, China and Russia, as before, belong to the former camp, and South Korea, Japan and Ukraine are firmly on the side of liberal democracy. The conflict is as irreconcilable as before and can only end with the collapse of one of the camps.”

On the reasons for North Korea’s increasing support to Russia, Petrov said Pyongyang “needs everything from food stuffs to energy, from technology to spare parts.”

“More than anything Pyongyang needs hard currency to bankroll the loyalty of the elites … Moscow is in the position to offer all these to Pyongyang and ask what it needs most at the moment.”

- ‘Beijing on the back burner’

China has maintained a silence on the issue of North Korean troops working with Russia.

Beijing maintains high-level ties with Moscow and has also been a lifeline for North Korea’s squeezed economy over past decades.

However, Beijing-based political analyst Einar Tangen told Anadolu that bilateral relations between China and North Korea have been “far from smooth.”

Russia’s “need for ammunition diversified North Korea’s relationship beyond its dependence” on China, he said.

Pyongyang has “always been suspicious of its ‘big brother’ next door,” while China is “frustrated” by North Korea’s “lack of economic progress and is concerned about what would happen if the regime became unstable,” said the analyst.

“Beijing does not want its troops eyeball-to-eyeball with American soldiers and does not want a flood of refugees pouring over the border,” he said.

The US has more than 28,500 troops deployed in South Korea under a bilateral treaty since the inter-Korean war of 1950s, which ended in an armistice that means the divided Koreas are still technically in a state of war.

“Sending troops to support Russia is a new tactic to draw attention to North Korea that firing ballistic missiles hasn’t achieved, and it sends a clear message that Kim is on the international stage,” he said.

Also, he stressed, Pyongyang “is not in the habit of notifying Beijing of its intentions.”

Pointing to the low-key commemoration of 75 years of diplomatic ties between China and North Korea in October, Einar said North Korea’s “pursuit of stronger ties with Russia has put Beijing on the back burner.”