The kilometre-long bridge that reveals Putin’s great weakness

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The opening of a first road bridge between Russia and North Korea shows the extent of Vladimir Putin’s dependence on the “Hermit Kingdom”, analysts say, including for foreign fighters who could help spare him from domestic unrest. 

The Khasan-Tumangang Bridge over the Tumen River is close to completion, satellite images show, after a year-long build that cost about £88m, according to Russian state media.

The kilometre-long structure sits a few hundred metres to the south of an existing rail connection between the two countries known as the Friendship Bridge.

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The project was signed off after a 2024 summit between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which deepened their alliance and led to Pyongyang playing an increasingly active role in the war in Ukraine.

Noerth Korea has already supplied an estimated 15,000 soldiers, millions of artillery shells and some longer-range weapons to support the Russian war effort. The bridge is expected to increase military and trade exchanges.

Ruslan Trad, a security researcher and journalist at the Atlantic Council and Bulgarian outlet Kapital, said there was “irony” in a self-styled great power being in a “structurally dependent relationship with one of the world’s most sanctioned and isolated states”.

The new bridge is “a monument to that dependency,” he added.

Mykola Bielieskov, a military researcher at the Ukraine government’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, said the arrangement highlighted the Kremlin’s dependence on a smaller ally, which weakened its image as a major power, but suggested the potential value of the partnership was more important.

“Definitely it’s a sign that Russia needs partners in war and is not self-sufficient,” he said. “But ultimately, everything is judged by the ability to last longer than the opponent in war, and [Russia] needs to involve as much resources as it can.”

BEIJING, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 3: (RUSSIA OUT) Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) greets North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un (L) after their bilateral meeting on September 3, 2025, in Beijing, China. President Putin is visiting China and will attend a military parade in Beijing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
Vladimir Putin greets North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a meeting in Beijing last year (Photo: Getty)

‘Artillery artery’

The speed of construction of the bridge reflects the importance of trade between the countries, said Trad: “Until now, bilateral trade relied almost entirely on a single, Soviet-era rail line and sporadic sea routes. The new road bridge would add to capacity, he said, and “in a wartime logistics context, that matters.”

The bridge will also “lower the friction and cost of transferring artillery shells, rockets, and other materiel”, he added.

Colonel Markus Reisner, an Austrian officer specialising in Russian forces, described the new supply line as an “artillery artery” that will expedite deliveries to Putin’s forces. “A lot more will go both ways,” he said.

Between late 2023 and early last year, at least 64 ships carried up to six million artillery rounds from North Korea to Russian ports, accounting for almost 100 per cent of the ammunition usage of some units, according to a Reuters study of military documents.

Russia has since scaled up its own production, from around a million shells in 2022 to seven million last year, according to an Estonian intelligence assessment.

Bielieskov said North Korean artillery is unlikely to make a major impact on the battlefield due to Russia’s expanded production and the dominance of drones. But the new bridge will “simplify the transfer of short range ballistic missiles”.

Foreign cannon fodder

Edward Hunter Christie, a former Nato official, said he expected the bridge to be used to bring in more personnel to enable Russia to continue to wage war in a high-attrition style that has led to more than a million casualties, according to most estimates.

This showed a “darker and uglier” side to Putin’s war plans, added Christie, suggesting that the Russian leader was seeking to make greater use of foreign fighters to spare residents of major cities. He pointed to a pattern of recruitment from peripheral regions of Russia as well as from abroad.

“It confirms the fundamental fact that the Putin regime pursues its neo-imperial aggression against Ukraine in a manner that disproportionately uses non-ethnic Russians as cannon fodder,” said Christie.

Large KN-23 Barrage in March 2023 This photo provided by the North Korean government shows what it says is an artillery drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea on Thursday, March 9, 2023. KCNA/AP
North Korea conducts a drill firing KN-23 short-range missiles. Pyongyang has supplied Russian forces with millions of artillery shells to aid the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine (Photo: KCNA/AP)

“There is a pattern of disproportionate use of soldiers from regions that are ethnically non-Russian…Tuva and Buryatia [remote regions of sourthern Siberia] have the highest casualty counts per 100,000 people. Combine that with the well-known scandals of Russia effectively abducting foreign migrant workers from Africa or South America and sending them to the front.

“And what is very clear is that the casualty rates for the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg are extremely low.”

Ukraine claims that more than 7,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in action to date. In an emotional ceremony last year, Kim paid tribute to those lost.

Putin has been under rare domestic pressure in recent weeks, with prominent writers publicly complaining about the impact of the war inside Russia, such as internet blackouts and high inflation. His approval rating has fallen even with the state-run pollster.

Offsetting more of the costs to North Korea could allow the Russian President to continue the war without stirring up more discontent on the home front.

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