Two senior U.S. military leaders focused on the Indo-Pacific detailed to lawmakers what Russia is offering to their partners — North Korea and China — in exchange for aid for the war in Ukraine.
“It’s a transactional symbiosis where each state fulfills the other state’s weakness to mutual benefit of each state,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of U.S. INDOPACOM, told lawmakers on Thursday.
China has provided Russia with 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the semiconductors supporting Russia’s “rebuilding [of] its war machine,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that it has tracked more than 150 Chinese nationals fighting for the Russian military. However, it’s unclear whether they were officially deployed there or volunteered on their own.
In exchange, Russia is helping them with “submarine technology, missile technology, surface-to-air missiles, and so forth,” Paparo added.
Paparo and Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of United Nations Command, ROK/US Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and the committee’s senate counterpart on Thursday.
Each of the anti-western countries has strengths that benefit another’s weaknesses, they told senators.
Paparo noted that North Korea sent Russia “thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of artillery shells,” thousands of short-range missiles, as well as more than ten thousand troops.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “expects concessions” in return, Paparo explained. “He’s doing it in order to gain concessions, and those concessions would be modernization of their air defenses, specifically the MiG 29 the SU 27 advanced help for their surface to air missiles, quieting technology for their submarines, additional help in order to instantiate a ballistic missile submarine as well.”
Brunson warned that the North Koreans have been able to advance their own military capabilities as well.
“The DPRK continues to build its nuclear weapons program and boast a Russian equipped, augmented, modernized military force of over 1.3 million personnel,” Brunson said. “We expect the DPRK to further develop hypersonic and multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, MIRV capabilities.”
The U.S. has 28,500 troops based in South Korea, which Brunson said was an appropriate number given their mission. The Pentagon is conducting a force posture review, reevaluating troop levels across the globe.
US PACIFIC COMMANDER DETAILS STARK CONSEQUENCES OF WAR WITH CHINA OVER TAIWAN
“Chairman, to reduce the force becomes problematic, and I won’t speak to policy, but what we do provide there, sir, is the potential to impose cost in the East Sea to Russia, the potential to impose costs in the West Sea, to China and to continue to deter against North Korea, as it currently stands,” Brunson explained.
“We’re talking about probabilities. With the loss of the force on the Korean peninsula, there’s a higher probability that he would invade [South Korea],” he added.