Russian soldiers have been heard raising concerns about how North Korean soldiers will be commanded and provided with ammunition and military kit, leaked intercepts obtained by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine and released on Friday show.

The Russian soldiers talk disdainfully about the incoming North Korean soldiers, codenamed the “K Battalion,” at one point referring to them as “the f**king Chinese.”

In the same extract, a serviceman describes another who has been tasked to “meet people.”

“And he’s like standing there with his eyes out, like… f**k,” the soldier says. “He came here and says what the f**k to do with them.”

The audio was intercepted from encrypted Russian transmission channels on the night of October 23, according to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence.

Ukraine’s analysis of the intercepts revealed that North Korean troop movements were planned for the morning of October 24, in the area of Postoyalye Dvory field camp in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion earlier this year.

The intercepts also reveal plans to have one interpreter and three senior officers for every 30 North Korean men, which the Russian soldiers are heard in the audio condemning.

“The only thing I don’t understand is that there [should be] three senior officers for 30 people. Where do we get them? We’ll have to pull them out,” one Russian serviceman says.

“I’m f***ing telling you, there are 77 battalion commanders coming in tomorrow, there are commanders, deputy commanders and so on,” a serviceman says in another extract.

The interepted audio follows a Thursday announcement from Ukraine’s military intelligence service that a group of North Korean soldiers have been spotted in Russia’s Kursk region, an area that borders Ukraine and has seen ongoing military operations.

In a post on its official Telegram account, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said some North Korean troops, who had received training in Russia’s far east, have made their way to the western Russian region, where Ukraine has maintained a foothold since launching an incursion in August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he received a report on the deployment of North Korean military personnel from Ukraine’s commander-in-chief.

“According to intelligence, on October 27-28, Russia will deploy its first North Korean troops in combat zones. This is a clear step in Russia’s escalation that matters, unlike all the disinformation circulating in Kazan these days,” Zelensky said, criticizing the BRICS summit staged by Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan.

The Kremlin had initially dismissed allegations of North Korean troop deployments, but on Thursday at the BRICS summit, Putin did not deny that Pyongyang had sent soldiers to the country.

“The actual involvement of North Korea in combat should be met not with a blind eye and confused comments, but with tangible pressure on both Moscow and Pyongyang to comply with the UN Charter and to punish escalation,” Zelensky added.

Israeli forces entered the compound of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and opened fire after days of laying siege to the facility, health authorities in the enclave said.

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital director, said in a video that Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the hospital compound late Thursday and began firing at parts of the complex, adding that “all departments of the hospital are under direct shelling.”

“Instead of receiving aid, we are receiving tanks,” he said.

Kamal Adwan is one of three minimally operational hospitals in northern Gaza, and the closest to Israeli military activity in Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya Refugee Camp. Despite its limited capacity, it has been receiving most of the injured from the surrounding fighting.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that since the raid on Kamal Adwan hospital, WHO has “lost touch with the personnel there.”

“This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” Ghebreyesus said on X. Prior to Friday’s raid, he said, WHO and its partners managed to reach Kamal Adwan “amid hostilities in the vicinity, and transferred 23 patients and 26 caregivers to Al-Shifa Hospital.”

The Israeli military said in a statement Friday that its forces are operating in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital “based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure,” adding that in the weeks preceding the operation, “the IDF facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services.”

COGAT, the Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into the strip, said on Friday that with the help of UNICEF and WHO, several patients and their escorts were evacuated from the facility. The hospital was also given fuel, blood units and medical equipment.

But WHO’s Ghebreyesus stated on X that the hospital is housing about 200 patients, along with hundreds more seeking shelter there.

‘Shocked by the entry of bulldozers and tanks’

Shamiya said that the military had entered the hospital yard for a second time on Friday morning and had begun separating men from women.

“After that, it became impossible to communicate with anyone.”

In his video message, Safiya said he was “shocked by the entry of bulldozers and tanks into the hospital compound,” adding that tanks began firing at the upper floors, shattering windows and “creating an atmosphere of panic, terror, and fear.”

“Everyone in the hospital gathered in the stairwell; it was a very distressing scene,” he said.

One video showed Abu Safiya speaking from within the Intensive Care Unit, where patients and medical staff were huddled. He said that some severely injured people were dying. Abu Safiya said that a number of properties around the hospital had been set on fire.

Later Thursday night, a convoy of supplies from the World Health Organization reached the hospital, he said. Video showed a fuel tanker and other vehicles close to the facility.

Abu Safiya said the convoy delivered enough fuel for five days, as well as 200 units of blood and a few other supplies, but no food or water.

He said he had been in touch with Israeli officers.

“I explained the situation of the patients and the injured people in the hospital, emphasizing that their condition was extremely critical and that evacuation was necessary.”

“We have no medical assistance that can reach them, and I do not have the means to help them even if they were able to reach us. We have nothing to offer them.”

It has been 21 days since Israel ramped up its military operation in northern Gaza. Authorities in Gaza say the military has stopped aid from reaching parts of the area and displaced many of its residents. Israel says it is preventing Hamas from regrouping.

Indian airlines have received more than 100 hoax bomb threats in a span of a few days, forcing planes to delay, reroute and make emergency landings – throwing the country’s aviation industry into costly disarray right before one of the biggest festivals of the year.

The epidemic of hoax threats has targeted both international and domestic flights, causing chaos on long-haul trips headed for places such as New York. Although one arrest was made last week, with authorities vowing to punish perpetrators potentially with jail time, the spate of threats has continued, often sent through emails and social media posts.

One airline alone, the budget company IndiGo Airlines, received nearly 30 bomb threats in four days since Sunday, according to statements by the carrier. Other Indian airlines, including Akasa Airlines, SpiceJet and Alliance Air, have also been impacted.

The highest-profile hoaxes targeted Air India last week; one flight en route to Chicago had to make an emergency landing in Canada’s northernmost city in the Arctic, while another flight headed to Singapore had to be escorted by Singaporean fighter jets, with bomb disposal squads waiting at the airport.

Since the flurry of hoaxes first started around mid-October, “we have [had] 150 to 160” threats, said Sanjay Lazar, an aviation expert and former Air India crew member.

Bomb threat hoaxes aren’t a new phenomenon in India – several airports received similar threats in April and June this year. But the sheer frequency and level of disruption in the past two weeks has been unprecedented, sending investigators scrambling to determine who is behind the threats.

Police in Mumbai said last Tuesday that they had arrested a minor suspected of posting threats against IndiGo Airlines on X, formerly Twitter. Police are also questioning a second minor, and “there are chances he played a role in this,” a spokesperson said.

But no further arrests have been made, and more threats have come in despite authorities stepping up security measures, threatening legal punishments, appeasing airlines and reassuring panicked passengers.

“Even though there are hoax threats, we can’t take the situation non-seriously,” said Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu in a news conference on Monday. “The safety and security of people and convenient travel … is always our utmost priority.”

With less than a week until Diwali, the festival of lights – which sparks a travel boom each year as millions of Indians fly domestically and diaspora members come home from abroad – experts worry that the ongoing hoaxes could wreak travel havoc.

Millions of dollars lost

Each bomb threat causes a ripple effect of disruptions, costing both airlines and passengers huge amounts of time and money, said Lazar.

This is partly because of strict protocols set out by outdated laws, he said. Under a 1982 law last amended in 2010, “every threat has to be taken into consideration,” he said – even though the law doesn’t mention modern factors such as social media that complicate the task.

There’s also the “lengthy process” of bureaucracy and coordinating with various committees, Lazar said.

Authorities follow these steps “word for word” with every single threat, said aviation minister Naidu. “Whenever there is a bomb threat case happening, if it is through a call or if it is through social media or if it is through some other means, we have a strict protocol that we follow,” he added.

But the threats – and their aftermath – have caused massive headaches for airlines. Not only do they have to disrupt passenger plans by rerouting or making unexpected landings, but they must also cope with the hours-long process of isolating the plane, checking the aircraft from top to bottom, screening every piece of luggage, and allowing a “cooling period” for the plane afterward, expert Lazar said.

“It’s not very simple … there’s a lot of cost and time involved.”

While the airlines have not disclosed the extent of their losses, Lazar estimated each affected carrier has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars – and the cost for the industry as a whole is likely in the millions.

The losses rack up through landing charges, fuel dumping, bomb disposal squad fees, and providing services for passengers including accommodation, alternate flights and refunds.

These disruptions would be a nightmare at any time – but particularly in the run-up to Diwali, which begins on October 31. Also called Deepvali, the festival of lights is celebrated by more than a billion Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists around the world, with families gathering to feast on food, exchange gifts and make religious offerings.

That also makes it the second-biggest travel period of the year in India, after the Christmas to New Year period, according to Lazar.

By September, flight bookings for the Diwali period had seen an 85% increase on last year – surpassing pre-pandemic levels, according to World on Holiday, an Indian organization that analyzes travel and hospitality data.

“Passengers are going to be scared but those who need to fly will fly … so what’s going to happen if this havoc is created around Diwali?” Lazar said.

He added that while he was worried about the recent string of bomb threats, he was “even more worried about what’s going to happen around Diwali and Christmas.”

Government efforts

Authorities still don’t know who is making these threats and why – though Naidu, the aviation minister, blamed the recent hoaxes on “minors and pranksters” in a post on X.

On Monday, he also admitted it’s hard to even say whether the threats are coming from inside India due to the potential use of VPNs to mask users’ locations.

Authorities are now investigating and coordinating with different government ministries, the minister added. Meanwhile, airports have increased the number of security checks and the use of CCTV cameras to monitor their area “more thoroughly.”

The civil aviation ministry is also trying to introduce legal changes as a deterrent. If passed, the amendments would put hoax perpetrators on a no-fly list and criminalize hoaxes as a “cognizable offence,” which allows police to arrest suspects without a warrant, Naidu said.

Lazar argues the proposed measures are far from enough – saying it was “stupid” to dismiss the hoaxes as “the work of a prankster” given the severity of the disruption and potential danger of a real threat.

Authorities should use the country’s technological heft to track down online users, he said, including working with international agencies and social media platforms.

Until then, “I don’t believe we’ve seen the end of this,” he said.

A man in Northern Ireland has been sentenced to life for several crimes, including manslaughter, after using social media sites to blackmail and sexually abuse at least 70 minors in several countries.

Alexander McCartney, 26, was sentenced by a judge at Belfast Crown Court on Friday for child sexual offenses, blackmail and the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl who took her own life in the United States in 2018 after being “catfished,” according to a statement from Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS).

Catfishing – often used on social media – is when a person uses false information and images to create a fake identity online with the intention of tricking, harassing, or scamming another person.

According to authorities, McCartney pretended to be a young girl, befriended victims on social media and manipulated them into sending him nude images of themselves.

The victims were then threatened “into sending him indecent images and videos of themselves, forcing them to engage in depraved and sometimes dangerous sexual acts,” the statement said.

McCartney – who targeted around 3,500 girls from Northern Ireland, Ireland, Great Britain, the US and New Zealand – sought to “exploit that vulnerability in the most shocking ways,” acting head of the PPS Serious Crime Unit Catherine Kierans said.

“All McCartney’s victims were young, innocent children” as young as 10 years old and “struggling with identity and body image issues and had reached out for help on social media,” Kierans said.

In total, McCartney pleaded guilty to 185 charges involving 70 victims. McCartney must serve a minimum of 20 years in prison before he can be considered for parole.

“Tragically, one of his young victims, who was just 12, had taken her own life during an online chat in which he was threatening her and forcing her to engage in sexual activity,” Kierans noted. She said that the girl, an American, and McCartney never met in person.

“If we discover this activity, or it is reported to us, we remove it, lock the violating account and report it to the authorities,” the social media site said. It added that the app has “extra protections for teens to make it difficult for them to be contacted by strangers.”

The PPS is working to identify more of McCartney’s victims, according to its statement.

Israel said on Saturday it had struck military targets inside Iran in response to earlier Iranian attacks, again raising fears that the long-running confrontation between the two powerful militaries could escalate into an all-out regional war that draws in the United States.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Iranian missile manufacturing sites and aerial defense systems in what appeared to be a highly calculated response that avoided critical energy infrastructure, such as oil fields and nuclear facilities.

Iran appeared to downplay the impact of the attack, claiming its air defenses had successfully countered the strikes in three provinces – Tehran, Ilam and Khuzestan – and that the damage was “limited.”

The US meanwhile described the attack as “an exercise in self-defense” that “specifically avoided populated areas and focused solely on military targets.”

Israel had vowed Iran would pay for its large-scale missile attack on October 1 that saw around 200 missiles fired at Israel, forcing people across the country to take cover in bomb shelters. For weeks Israeli leaders have been deliberating on the nature and scope of such a response.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

In the early hours of Saturday local time, Israel launched direct airstrikes against Iran, conducting what it said was “precise strikes on military targets.”

The Israeli military said its air force struck “missile manufacturing facilities” that it said were used to produce the missiles that Iran had fired at Israel over the last year.

It also said the Israeli military struck “surface-to-air missile arrays and additional Iranian aerial capabilities, that were intended to restrict Israel’s aerial freedom of operation in Iran.” It is unclear if those manufacturing facilities also produced missiles launched by Iranian proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iran later confirmed the attack but said the strikes caused only “limited damage” in some areas, while images broadcast on state media showed the calmness on the streets of the capital Tehran.

Iran’s state news agency reported strikes targeting “military centers in the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam” had been “successfully intercepted.”

Several explosions were heard west of Tehran around 2:15 a.m. local time (7 p.m. ET Friday), according to the state news agency. Iranian officials said blasts heard around the country were related to air defense systems being deployed.

The initial strikes were closely followed by a second wave, as video posted to social media by Tehran residents showed tracer fire and explosions illuminating the Iranian capital’s sky as dawn neared. A third and final wave then followed.

By about 6 a.m. local time, the Israeli military said it has concluded its operation, saying the “mission was fulfilled” and Israeli jets “have safely returned home.”

How did we get here?

Saturday’s strikes are part of Israel’s long-awaited retaliation to Iran’s missile attack earlier this month, as the ongoing war in the Middle East continues to escalate to dangerous new levels.

On October 1, Iran launched 200 projectiles towards Tel Aviv and Israeli military bases in what it said was a response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others, its largest ever such attack.

That missile barrage came about 24 hours after Israel launched a ground war in Lebanon, opening a new front in its war against Iranian-backed militants.

Israel and Iran have been fighting a shadow war through proxies and covert actions for decades. In April, that war came out into the open when Iran launched a wave of drones and missiles at Israel in an unprecedented attack in response to a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria.

In recent weeks, Israel has ramped up its attacks against Iran’s proxies, including launching strikes targeting the Houthis in Yemen, and militants in Syria.

But it’s in Lebanon where Israel has refocused its operations after tit-for-tat strikes across the border escalated after Israel eliminated the leadership of Iran-backed Hezbollah in series of assassinations and airstrikes.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on his underground headquarters in Beirut in September. Netanyahu had previously said his killing was “a necessary step” toward changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come.”

Israel’s war in Lebanon has since killed more than 2,500 people, displaced 1.2 million and created a unprecedented humanitarian crisis, according to Lebanon’s leader and international health officials.

In a statement issued at the outset of Saturday’s actions, the Israeli military accused Iran and its regional proxies of relentlessly attacking Israel beginning with last year’s 7 October attack by Iran-allied Hamas, during which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 abducted.

Following the October 7 attacks, Israel declared war on Hamas and launched military operations in Gaza that have killed more than 42,000 people.

The UN’s human rights chief warned Friday that “one of the darkest moments” of the war is unfolding in the north of Gaza where the Israeli military is “subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and starvation.”

What happens next?

A major concern of increasing military escalations is that Israel and Iran will become entangled in a full-scale war, one that risks drawing the US – Israel’s closest ally and biggest weapons supplier – into the fray.

A senior US administration official said President Biden has “encouraged” Netanyahu last week to “design” a retaliatory attack that would “deter future attacks against Israel.”

In recent weeks, the US and other allies have urged Netanyahu to exercise restraint and avoid striking Iran’s nuclear and oil assets.

The White House said the US “was not a participant in this operation” and urged “Iran to cease its attacks on Israel so that this cycle of fighting can end without further escalation.”

By refraining from attacking Iran’s oil or nuclear sites, Israel has potentially left room for de-escalation. But it is unclear whether Iran will respond to this latest attack.

Israel’s top military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said after the conclusion of strikes that if Iran were to begin “a new round of escalation,” Israel will be “obligated to respond.”

Former British nurse and convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby on Thursday lost an attempt to appeal against her conviction for trying to murder a newborn baby, amid questions over the fairness of her trials.

Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, making her Britain’s worst serial child killer of modern times.

She was convicted of an eighth count of attempted murder at a retrial earlier this year, after the original jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge that Letby tried to kill a baby girl by removing her breathing tube.

Prosecutor Nick Johnson told Manchester Crown Court that, little more than an hour after the child was born, a senior doctor found the baby’s breathing tube dislodged and Letby standing there “doing nothing.”

Letby’s lawyer Benjamin Myers told London’s Court of Appeal on Thursday that Letby “maintains and has maintained she is not guilty of the offenses.”

He argued that the retrial was an abuse of process as Letby could not have a fair trial because of extensive coverage of her convictions, which featured “intense hostility towards her” and comments made by the Crown Prosecution Service and police.

“There was no way in which the jury in trial two were going to have the publicity and the comment and the hostility ameliorated,” Myers said.

Judge William Davis refused Letby’s application for leave to appeal against the conviction from her retrial.

Letby attended the hearing by videolink from prison and sat impassively as the judge stated the court’s reasons for refusing her application.

“The outcome of the first trial undoubtedly led to an unusually large amount of publicity and online debate,” Davis said. “That is because, on its face, the case was extraordinary.”

Letby’s attempt to overturn her convictions from the first trial was refused in May. She can now only challenge those convictions if the Criminal Cases Review Commission refer those cases back to the Court of Appeal.

Since her trials, Letby’s conviction has come under a spotlight, following criticism by some experts of medical and statistical evidence presented by the prosecution.

Some media have questioned whether she might be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, while a public inquiry into her crimes continues.

A group of North Korean soldiers have been spotted in Russia’s Kursk region, an area of ongoing military operations, Ukraine’s military intelligence service announced Thursday.

After receiving training in Russia’s far east, some troops have now made their way to the western Russia region where Ukraine has maintained a strong foothold since launching an incursion in August.

In a post on its official Telegram account, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said the troops had been spotted in Kursk on Wednesday.

The intelligence service said the roughly 12,000 North Korean soldiers that have been deployed to Russia are receiving training at five military training grounds in the east.

Thursday’s 12,000 figure is larger than had been previously been flagged by US officials. On Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in eastern Russia this month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukraine had intelligence about Russia “training two military units from North Korea” involving perhaps “two brigades of 6,000 people each.”

Ukrainian intelligence services said Thursday that “several weeks” have been allocated for the coordination of the North Korean troops which includes 500 officers and three generals.

Moscow ‘in contact’ with Pyongyang

Ukraine had repeatedly warned that warming relations between Russia and North Korea could see Pyeongyang taking a more direct role in the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did nothing to dispel this suspicion when questioned by journalists at the BRICS summit on Thursday, saying Russia is currently “in contact” with North Korea.

“We have never doubted that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously,” Putin told the press conference in Kazan, Russia.

“But what and how we will do is our business,” he added.

Putin’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has been tasked with overseeing the troop’s training, the Ukrainian intelligence service said.

The soldiers are thought to have received ammunition, bedding, winter clothing and footwear, and hygiene products from the Russian authorities, the Ukrainian intelligence service reported.

Violence is intensifying in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, this week, which saw a United Nations helicopter hit by gunfire and two gangs apparently target US embassy vehicles.

The evacuation of “non-emergency” diplomatic workers will be rolled out in the “coming days,” the second source said.

Also on Thursday, a humanitarian helicopter used by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in the country was hit by heavy gunfire as it was airborne over Port-au-Prince, causing the agency to cancel Friday’s scheduled flights.

“Humanitarian air transport is essential to delivering a response across Haiti,” the WFP statement also said. Many roads in the Caribbean nation are too dangerous to use for overland transport due to gang attacks and roadblocks.

This isn’t the first time a helicopter used by the WFP is hit by gunfire. Last July, an apparent stray bullet hit a helicopter while parked at the Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince.

Gang violence in Haiti has spiraled in recent years, with attacks becoming more brazen and violent. Gangs in Haiti control much of the capital, and the ongoing violence has left nearly 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years. The UN reports that 3,661 people have been killed since January this year.

Earlier this month, three infants were among the scores of people brutally killed in a gang attack in central Haiti. Members of the “Gran Grif” gang used automatic rifles to kill at least 70 people in an attack that displaced 6,000 people, said a UN agency at the time.

The thousands of North Korean troops US intelligence says arrived in Russia for training this month have sparked concern they will be deployed to bolster Moscow’s battlefront in Ukraine.

They’ve also turned up alarm from the United States and its allies that growing coordination between anti-West countries is creating a much broader, urgent security threat – one where partnerships of convenience are evolving into more outright military ties.

Hundreds of Iranian drones have also been part of Moscow’s onslaught on Ukraine, and last month the US said Tehran had sent the warring country short-range ballistic missiles as well.

China, meanwhile, has been accused of powering Russia’s war machine with substantial amounts of “dual use” goods like microelectronics and machine tools, which can be used to make weapons. Last week, the US for the first time penalized two Chinese firms for supplying complete weapons systems. All three countries have denied they are providing such support.

Taking stock of the emerging cooperation, a Congress-backed group that evaluates US defense strategy dubbed Russia, China, Iran and North Korea this summer an “axis of growing malign partnerships.”

The fear is that a shared animosity toward the US is increasingly driving these countries to work together – amplifying the threat that any one of them alone poses to Washington or its allies, not just in one region but perhaps in multiple parts of the world at the same time.

“If (North Korea) is a co-belligerent, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only on in Europe — it will also impact things in the Indo Pacific as well,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday in the first US confirmation of North Korean troops in Russia.

‘Driven by survival strategy’

Decades after the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and the strident anti-West coalition of the Cold War era – and years since George W. Bush’s dubbed US enemies Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil” – there’s a perception that a new, dangerous alignment is on the rise, with Putin’s war as its catalyst.

Such an alignment would bring together two long-time nuclear-armed powers, a state believed to have assembled a host of illegal nuclear warheads in North Korea, and Iran, which the US says could likely assembly such a weapon in a matter of weeks.

North Korea’s military partnership with Russia now links the grinding, hot conflict in Europe to an especially tense period in the cold conflict on the Korean Peninsula, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has elevated his threats toward the South, with which it remains technically at war.

Following the intelligence on the North Korean deployment to Russia, South Korea said it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine, where the US ally has yet to directly provide arms.

For North Korea, where leader Kim has called to ramp up his country’s illicit nuclear weapons program, there’s been little to lose in sending what’s believed to be millions of rounds of artillery, short-range ballistic missiles and, more recently, troops to Russia.

In exchange, cash-strapped and internationally isolated Pyongyang has likely received food and other necessities – and potentially support developing its space capacities, which could also help its sanctioned missile program.

The importance of drone warfare in Ukraine has also seen Russia look to Iran for procurement – deepening a security alignment that dates to 2015 and the war in Syria, when both backed the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

And for Tehran – weighted by hefty Western sanctions and embroiled in the expanding Middle Eastern conflict with US-backed Israel – supplying Russia weapons is thought to potentially boost its defense sector, while its ties with Beijing and Moscow provide it with diplomatic cover.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who declared a “no limits” partnership with Putin weeks before his invasion, has claimed neutrality in the conflict and has largely steered Chinese firms away from supplying direct lethal aid.

Yet it has filled wide gaps in Russian demand of other goods, including products deemed by the US and others to be dual use, and benefited from Russia’s discounted energy. Beijing defends its “normal trade” with Russia. China has also continued to expand joint military drills and diplomatic ties with a country it sees a key partner in pushing back against the West in international fora.

But even as these four countries have their own motivations to cooperate with one another individually, especially within the context of Russia’s war, clear limits exist in any broader coordination, mutual trust, and even interest in working together – at least for now, observers say.

“This is a set of bilateral relationships driven by each country’s survival strategy, or what’s on the menu for geopolitics and what’s the crisis of the day or the decade that they are dealing with,” said Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

“These are authoritative regimes … and they all see the US as a common adversary. That’s the glue that keeps them together, but whether we can talk about a degree of coordination (between all four) … I think we are very far from that,” he said.

That makes the pressing question whether these current alignments can endure beyond the war in Ukraine and evolve into outright coordination between all four nations.

The China factor

A key factor in how any further alignment develops is China, observers say – by far the most powerful player in the grouping, the lead trade partner for Russia, North Korea and Iran, and the nation viewed by the US as its primary adversary.

As its divisions with Washington have deepened, Beijing has ramped up efforts to challenge US global leadership and shape an international order into one that favors China and other autocracies.

Russia’s role in that effort was on show this week in its southwestern city of Kazan, where Xi and Putin hailed their commitment to building a “fairer” world on the sidelines of a summit of the BRICS group whose membership they’d jointly worked to grow this year.

The two have brought Iran into that diplomatic fold and also largely sided with Tehran in the conflict in the Middle East, where its proxies are fighting Israel. China, Russia and Iran have also held four joint naval drills since 2019, and China is by far Iran’s largest energy buyer.

At the same time, heavily sanctioned Iran is no longer the “favorite state for China’s Middle East policy” as Beijing builds relations with wealthier Gulf countries, according to Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

Beijing also carefully manages its relationship with North Korea – which is almost wholly economically and diplomatically dependent on China. Chinese leaders are widely seen as being wary of the burgeoning Kim-Putin alignment and the potential for an empowered North Korea to cause trouble and draw more US focus to the region.

When asked about the movement of North Korean troops into Russia at a regular press briefing Thursday, China’s foreign ministry said it “does not have information on that.”

While it practices its own aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan, the democratic island Beijing claims, China may not want to appear to lean too hard into these partnerships and hinder efforts to portray itself as a responsible, global leader.

“Russia, North Korea, Iran is the type of grouping that China least wants to openly associate itself with,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

China has been “desperate to clarify that it is not a trilateral alliance with Russia and North Korea,” and it also “has more options than these countries … and prefers working with larger number of countries” to compete with the West, he said.

‘A real risk’

Viewed from the West, however, China’s refusal to cut off economic lifelines to a UN sanctions-defiant North Korea and a Russia that has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is often seen as an open endorsement of these regimes.

In July, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, an independent group tasked by Congress with evaluating US defense strategy, said China and Russia’s partnership had “deepened and broadened” to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea.

“This new alignment of nations opposed to US interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war,” it said.

China has repeatedly insisted that its relationship with Russia is one of “non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party.”

NATO has also in recent years moved to ramp up relations with US allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific, with a meeting of defense ministers last week joined for the first time by Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

In the short term, Russia’s weapons partnerships also open the door for Iran and North Korea to potentially obtain and produce Moscow’s sensitive weapons technologies and even ship them around the world, according to Carnegie’s Zhao.

The current dynamics also raise the risk that future conflicts – including one where China is at the center and not Russia – see coordination between the four, some analysts assess.

For example, in a potential conflict in the South China Sea or over Taiwan, there is debate over whether Beijing would want to see North Korea or Russia play a role in creating a distraction in North Asia.

But some experts also warn against seeing this “axis” or such a future as a foregone conclusion – as these relationships remain opportunistic, rather than based on deep ideological alignment or trust.

For one, it’s possible that “some more moderate behavior” could be incentivized on the part of China, which could dial down this potential, according to Sydney Seiler, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But as the optics stand today – “the risk is sufficiently present” that the US could face a future conflagration involves multiple of these countries, he said.