MOSCOW — Since the Kremlin launched its war in Ukraine just over three and a half years ago, Russian soldiers have been canonized on TV screens and billboards across Moscow.
But this week, as Muscovites shrugged off President Donald Trump’s new sanctions while already grappling with mounting economic concerns, there was also space carved out for a burgeoning ally in the state-run Museum of Victory.
The Kremlin long worked to keep secret the role North Korea’s forces played in the war on Ukraine. Now, it’s celebrating it in a public relations U-turn, which saw the museum open a new exhibition earlier this month celebrating the alliance that helped to push back the biggest foreign incursion into Russian territory since World War II, when Ukrainian forces smashed across the border in August of last year.
Ukraine and South Korea estimate Pyongyang has ultimately deployed more than 10,000 troops to the war in return for economic and military technology assistance.
Their sacrifice is celebrated with mannequins wearing North Korean uniforms and drawings by soldiers on the battlefields of Russia’s Kursk region, alongside bloodstained personal diaries and letters from troops.
“When they are not fighting, they write poetry, letters home or words of praise to their supreme commander,” Ivan Kolegaev, the museum’s deputy director for exhibition work, told NBC News on Wednesday, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Some of these notes, you can see the stains, were carried by the soldiers themselves,” he said. Pointing to a bullet-pierced diary, he said it contained “a poem written by a young soldier.”
“I hope he survived,” Kolegaev said soberly. “They also draw a lot — their work is beautiful.”
Another bloodstained letter from a soldier to his family urges his parents not to worry about him. “I received the order from the supreme commander and am now bravely fighting far from home. We are all ready to give our lives in bloody battles,” they wrote.
Nearby, drawings by North Korean soldiers depicting trenches and fighting alongside Russian soldiers hung on the walls, among around 150 items on display and over 100 digitized photo and documentary materials that make up the exhibition.
A short film about “international solidarity” between the two countries “against Western imperialism” ran on a loop, as hundreds of schoolchildren and members of the public made their way past.
In promotional material, the museum says it runs “patriotic programs and quests” for school groups, and its “Children’s Center” is described as “a unified space for civic-patriotic education of students in educational institutions.” On Wednesday some of them chanted slogans as they took part in a patriotic training exercise.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that there is now an overt recognition of the role that North Korean troops are playing in Russia’s assault on Europe since the semiserious denials of this fact ceased some time ago,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“What is more interesting is the way this is being presented to the Russian public, because a core element of the Russian great power status is that Russia does not need assistance from other countries. It is fully independent and sovereign in the sense that it can manage its own affairs,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.
“So this does indicate a gradual shift, possibly an attempt to bring about a gradual shift in Russia’s understanding of its place in the world, where previously, presentation of a Asiatic ally as essential to Russia for achieving its aims would have been unthinkable,” Giles added.
South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated last month that about 2,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed in the war, which entered its fourth year in February.
Attempts to bring an end to the fighting stalled this week when President Donald Trump confirmed that a second summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war was off.
The United States subsequently imposed substantial sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, the first economic punishments slapped on Moscow by Trump during his second term.
The move was greeted with anger in Russia, although Putin told journalists Thursday they “will not have a significant impact on the health of our economy.”
The role of Western nations in the war, including the U.S., was on display in another gallery at the Museum of Victory. Under banners that read “Weapons of the West” were American Humvees, a burned-out Bradley Fighting Vehicle and an M1 Abrams battle tank, alongside other military hardware and British helmets.
These are the trophies of the “special military operation” and evidence of NATO technology’s defeat, according to signs in Russian near the display.
This serves two purposes, according to Giles. “The first is the argument that Russian military technology is superior to that of the West,” he said, adding that it “also this plays into the story that Russia has been telling its citizens its colonial war of genocide against Ukraine is fighting not Ukraine, but the West.”
Displaying this hardware shows museumgoers that “there is physical evidence which suggests that Western armies are providing more support to Ukraine than they are,” he said.
“In reality, Russia will milk this for all it is worth.”
