For months it’s been known that Russia is getting ammunition and, possibly, weapons from North Korea. At first, it was believed that most of those supplies were artillery shells, but it was quite obvious that Russia needs more than that. Now there are reports that Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles to launch cruel attacks against Ukrainian cities.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia in September 2023. He met with Putin, and had nice excursions in Russian rocket facilities. Soon after, there were reports that North Korea was sending shipping containers with ammunition to Russia.
The defenders of Ukraine reported that along 122 mm and 152 mm shells, Russia also got RPGs and other weapons. Some of them were reported as malfunctioning pretty early on. And now, in the beginning of 2024 Russia has started attacking Ukraine with North Korean ballistic missiles.
Kharkiv after Russian missile attacks on 31st of December 2023. Image credit: Armyinform.com.ua via Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)
John Kirby, United States National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, revealed that on December 30th, 2023 Russian forces fired at least one North Korean ballistic missile into Ukraine. This missile appears to have landed in an open field in the Zaporizhia region, which allowed experts to have a better look at it.
Reportedly, analysis of the debris is still ongoing, but it does seem like the missile was made in North Korea. On January 2 Russia launched a number of North Korean ballistic missiles into Ukraine.
The United States is still assessing the impact of these additional missiles. On one hand, it does show that Russia’s own arsenals are not bottomless. On the other hand, Russia has North Korea as a resource they can tap into to prolong the war and extend the suffering they are causing.
Kirby, as reported by Reuters, said that the range of these ballistic missiles is about 900 km – they could be KN-23 and KN-25. Debris found in Ukraine is consistent with that assessment. These are fairly new missiles, designed to change their normal ballistic trajectory to avoid interception. Dangerous stuff. These missiles were first shown in 2019 and do not appear to be related to Russian missiles.
Spokesman of the prosecutor’s office, Dmytro Chubenko, said that one of the rockets fired at Kharkiv on January 2 could very well be a North Korean supplied missile. He said that research is still ongoing.https://t.co/KFhH5xQI50 pic.twitter.com/IlbnikAVsw
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) January 6, 2024
Despite Moscow and Pyongyang denying this level of military cooperation, the intelligence is clear – South Korea believes that around 2,000 shipping containers with weapons and ammo went from North Korea to Russia.
This certainly would diminish Russia’s complaints about Ukraine using foreign-supplied weapons to attack targets in the territory of Russia, but only if they were logical to begin with. It could also encourage South Korea to increase its support for Ukraine.
The use of North Korean ballistic missiles against Ukraine will certainly be hidden from the Russian public – they hardly know about the use of Iranian Shahed drones. This would diminish the image of the Russian arms industry and show that the Russian ammo capacity does have its limits.
Written by Povilas M.
Sources: Ukrinform.net, Reuters