Editor’s note: The following article is an opinion piece by Diana Y. Myers, a North Korea nuclear expert and former Air Force doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. She is also a strategist for the U.S. Air Force. The views expressed in this article are exclusively the author’s own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. military or U.S. government, nor represent those of NK News.

The recent deploymentof North Korean troops to Russia in support of its war in Ukraine has sparked widespread speculation about their intended roles and objectives, and highlighted leader Kim Jong Un’s