https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/did-stalin-lure-the-united-states-the-korean-war-new-evidence-the-origins-the-korean-war

Kim argues that the document suggests that Stalin gave Kim Il Sung permission to attack South Korea on 25 June 1950 not because he felt the US would not get involved, but precisely because he wanted the US to become entangled in a limited conflict in Asia. Other scholars, by contrast, have emphasized that Stalin secretly approved Kim Il Sung`s plan to attack during the North Korean leader's secret trip to Moscow in April 1950 – only after receiving his assurances that South Korea could be overwhelmed so quickly, in a matter of a few weeks, that Washington would be unable to rescue it.2 From the very beginning he envisioned a conflict involving not just the North Koreans, but also the newly established People's Republic of China. Doing so, Kim argues, would allow the Soviet Union to concentrate its energies on consolidating its European empire and forestalling the outbreak of a third world war. Kim bases his findings, which will be published in an NKIDP Working Paper later this year, on this and additional documents that have recently become available from the collection of the late Russian diplomat and historian Andrei Ledovskii as well as from Russian and Chinese archives.