Ukrainian troops holding positions in Kursk say the North Koreans have reappeared on the battlefield and become even more formidable foes.

“Russia may have begun the full-scale use of North Korean missiles in the wake of the formalization of the bilateral treaty. Moscow will continue to strengthen its dependence on Pyongyang,” said Shinji Hyodo, a senior researcher at the Defense Ministry’s National Institute for Defense Studies.

Behavior in this war, not just of Moscow and Kyiv but of other states as well, has been conditioned by Russia’s possession and Ukraine’s lack of weapons of mass destruction. Russia holds the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear warheads,