WASHINGTON—On August 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Kremlin has decided to deploy between 30,000 and 50,000 North Korean troops on Russian soil. According to a Ukrainian intelligence official, Moscow has also recently deployed 120 KN-23/KN-24 ballistic missiles, six launchers, and ninety North Korean military personnel in Russia’s western Voronezh region. The reports came shortly after news broke that the United States is reconsidering granting Ukraine a license to produce Patriot interceptor missiles.
While troop transfers are significant, North Korea’s ballistic missiles may prove more consequential in the battle for Ukraine’s skies. The ground war has stalled along a drone-enforced, thirty-kilometer-wide “kill zone” at the front line, while Kyiv faces acute shortages of US-made antiballistic missile interceptors, which have provided Ukraine with its most effective defense against ballistic missiles.
North Korea is becoming part of Russia’s war machine
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, North Korea has become one of Russia’s most direct and consequential backers, providing troops, missiles, ammunition, specialist military personnel, and labor. In exchange, Pyongyang has received hard currency, energy supplies, and military technologies worth at least $14 billion over the past three years.
The two countries deepened military ties in June 2024 by signing a mutual defense pact during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang. In October of the same year, North Korea sent an estimated 14,000 troops to the Kursk region in Russia in a bid to repel Ukrainian forces after Kyiv launched its incursion.
Since late 2023, Pyongyang has reportedly supplied Russia with around 150 ballistic missiles to supplement Moscow’s own Iskander arsenal. A May 2025 report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team found that Moscow is using North Korean weapons in attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and civilian population.
This pattern signals that Moscow is institutionalizing its relationship with Pyongyang while drawing Iran and China deeper into its war against Ukraine and the West. Russia’s war machine is now sustained by an authoritarian supply chain: North Korean missiles, ammunition, and personnel; Iranian drones; and China’s dual-use equipment.
Ukraine’s interceptor shortage is becoming a winter vulnerability
Ahead of winter, Moscow is exploiting Ukraine’s Patriot shortages, aiming to weaken Ukraine’s economy, terrorize its population, and force Ukraine to capitulate. In a deadly Russian attack on August 11—one that Zelenskyy said used a North Korean missile and killed ten Ukrainian civilians—none of the missiles were intercepted.
According to Major Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Russia is seeking to nearly triple the number of ballistic missiles it can launch simultaneously against Ukraine from seventy-seven to two hundred. This figure is likely to outpace Western deliveries of interceptors to Ukraine, which have dropped to one-third of the 2025 level.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Ukraine is “literally fighting for every missile” as demand for Patriot PAC-3 and PAC-2 interceptors surges in the Middle East and European allies grow increasingly wary of sending their own interceptors in case they must fend off a future Russian strike.
Ukraine’s current vulnerability is partly the product of Western hesitation to give Kyiv the weapons it needs on timelines short enough to counter Russian strikes. Moreover, if European countries had invested earlier in expanding their production capacity for Patriot missiles or European systems, such as the Franco-Italian SAMP/T, then both Kyiv and Europe would now be less dependent on US technology and less vulnerable to potential future Russian attacks.
Licensing Patriots and backing Freyja would be wins for the West
Licensing Ukraine to build Patriot interceptor missiles would not solve Kyiv’s short-term shortage. But it would serve Ukraine’s long-term security needs and advance US interests.
Ukraine’s technological ingenuity could help bring production online relatively quickly. Expanded production would also matter beyond Eastern Europe: Patriot interceptors are in short supply across multiple theaters, and additional production capacity would ease pressure on US allies and partners over time. It would also signal to Putin that Washington is determined to prevent him from achieving his goal of gaining effective political control over Ukraine. That might make the Kremlin dictator consider for the first time the compromises necessary to negotiate a durable peace.
Moreover, participating European countries could accelerate the development of the European-Ukrainian anti-ballistic missile project Freyja, offering an alternative or complement to Patriots, especially as other European systems have not proved capable of downing Russian ballistic missiles. The project was launched in July 2026 by ten governments and twelve defense companies. Partners and allies should now prioritize integrating European technology and Ukrainian hardware to produce an operational prototype by mid-2027, then work on testing and scaling production.
Close the winter gap
Long-term production will not help Ukraine survive this winter unless allies also move existing interceptors now. European countries with Patriot stockpiles, such as Spain and Greece, could do more to close the immediate gap. Ukraine has reportedly asked Athens for 200 PAC-2 interceptors, but Greece has not confirmed the transfer. Poland has released five PAC-3s, despite political backlash at home, while Germany and Spain have reportedly released five each. These additions are useful, but they do not address the full scale of the shortage.
Japan and South Korea could also play a role, especially as North Korea’s expanding military capability increasingly links the European and Indo-Pacific theaters. If Russia is internationalizing the war, Western allies should respond by internationalizing their defense against an interconnected axis of aggressors.
Strike at the source
Ukraine cannot win with defensive measures alone. The United States and other NATO members should provide the intelligence and long-range systems Kyiv needs to target missile launch sites and North Korean deployments in Russia. Options could include German Taurus or US Tomahawk missiles. That would be a more credible answer to Moscow’s latest escalation than asking Kyiv to absorb more strikes while waiting for scarce interceptors.
Washington could also press SpaceX to allow Starlink connectivity over Russian territory to support Kyiv’s long-range campaign. Zelenskyy has been making the case for Starlink’s expanded use for weeks, reportedly raising it with Trump during his Oval Office meeting on July 28.
Ukraine needs Western funding at wartime speed
Faster Western funding could also help Ukraine intensify drone strikes against Russian assets in Crimea, which Kyiv is seeking to render unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.
In an Associated Press interview published on August 10, Brovdi framed the bottleneck as funding speed, not Ukrainian production capacity. “It’s not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers doesn’t allow us to make the necessary quantities [of drones],” Brovdi said. “It’s the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans.”
The delay has consequences. Brovdi said that Ukraine’s drone forces are operating at only 14 percent of the capacity needed for a full-strength campaign and could strike seven times more military targets if Western funds arrived faster.
The NATO Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) scheme, in which countries help purchase systems for Ukraine from the United States, offers one vehicle for closing that gap. It has already attracted $5.5 billion in pledged contributions from twenty-nine European allies and Indo-Pacific partners. But pledges are not the same as timely disbursement. Ukraine reportedly raised $4.3 billion of the $5 billion planned by the end of 2025, leaving a $700 million shortfall even before the current escalation. This year, securing funding from allies and partners has proven more challenging. If delays are overcome, PURL could provide steadier weapons deliveries for Ukraine’s drone offensive.
