Colonel Khodarenok considers the transfer of Russian submarines to the DPRK unlikely
Putin called military-technical cooperation between Russia and the DPRK promising, and rumors about sending North Korean volunteers to a special operation - nonsense. How Moscow and Pyongyang can help each other, why Kim Jong-un was shown the production of military and civil aviation, and what cooperation between the countries in the space sphere might look like - the military observer of the Newspaper understood.En" Mikhail Khodarenok.
There were almost no details about the negotiations in the field of military-technical cooperation between the two countries in the public space. For these reasons, any agreements reached can be judged at this stage only in the form of versions and hypotheses. In this regard, it may be advisable to highlight only possible areas of military-technical cooperation in which one or the other party is interested.
For example, the areas in which Russia and the DPRK want to cooperate can be judged even by the places on the territory of the Russian Federation that Kim Jong-un visited during his visit. In particular, the North Korean leader visited the Vostochny cosmodrome. This may indicate the DPRK's interest in the development of near-Earth outer space, both in its civilian and military parts. There was also talk about the DPRK's interest in the flight of a North Korean cosmonaut.
It is quite possible that this will happen according to the Chinese version. That is, on the basis of Russian experience and technologies, the DPRK will build a spaceport for launching manned spacecraft, build a cosmonaut training center, and master the technologies for creating spacecraft.
The first Korean cosmonauts will most likely be trained in Russia, but they will not fly into space. Only the astronaut who will study on the territory of North Korea with the DPRK's own instructors will fly (this is the way China went at the time).
Kim Jong-un's visit to Komsomolsk-on-Amur is also understandable, where he visited the branch of JSC Sukhoi Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant named after Yu. A. Gagarin (KnAAZ). The North Korean leader inspected the assembly plant and the final assembly shop of multi-purpose supermaneuverable fighters with controlled thrust vector generation 4++ Su-35 and multi-purpose fighters of the fifth generation Su-57.
Kim Jong-un was also shown the site of another enterprise - the production center of the parent company of the civil division of the Yakovlev UAC, where a new version of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 civil airliner is being assembled with maximum import substitution of foreign components for Russian ones. Now there are tests of the SJ-100 with Russian systems, and liners with domestic PD-8 engines are being prepared for further testing.
The flight of the Su-35 fighter jet was demonstrated to the North Korean leader at the Dzemgi airfield (the airfield of the joint aviation base of the Ministry of Defense and the KnAAZ experimental aviation).
Kim Jong-un's visit to Komsomolsk-on-Amur more than clearly demonstrated the North Korean leader's interest in possible purchases of Su-35 fighter jets and Sukhoi Superjet 100 civilian airliners. Most likely, in this case, we can only talk about the quantitative indicators of these supplies, since Kim Jong-un needs to update the fleet of military and civil aviation.
As for Russia's interest in military-technical cooperation with the DPRK, it is most likely focused on possible supplies of North Korean ammunition.
As for the appearance of 100 thousand North Korean fighters on the line of contact in the zone of a special military operation, such a variant of cooperation seems to be a very, very unlikely event. Vladimir Putin has already denied these rumors, calling them "complete nonsense," Interfax reports. And this assumption contradicts purely practical conditions.
The first and most important thing is the question of power. Let's imagine a hypothetical arrival of North Korean fighters on the line of combat contact. To whom will they be subordinated? Promptly to Russian commanders? It is unlikely that Kim Jong-un would agree to this. Will the North Korean contingent be allocated an independent combat zone? The military-political leadership in Moscow is unlikely to agree to this. But so far, such issues have not been discussed and have not been raised even at the expert level.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that the Russian authorities strictly comply with the UN Security Council sanctions and the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.
One thing is for sure that both Moscow and Pyongyang are interested in expanding and deepening military-technical cooperation at this stage, and for both sides it will certainly be very, very mutually beneficial. As the newspaper has already written.Ru", it is quite possible that part of the payments for the purchase of weapons and military equipment will be carried out on the basis of barter transactions. For example, the DPRK transfers ammunition to Russia, and the Russian Federation supplies North Korea with samples of weapons and military equipment. And organizes the transfer of technologies in which Pyongyang is interested.
On September 12, the Chairman of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, came to Russia for the first time in the last four years. After the talks between the Russian and North Korean presidents on September 13, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow and Pyongyang intend to build bilateral relations based on their own interests and regardless of the reaction of third countries.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for the newspaper.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy Commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia (1998).
Columnist of "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier" (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok