North Korea is capable of producing ballistic missiles and supplying them to Russia for use in Ukraine in a matter of months, researchers have told the UN Security Council (UNSC), following the discovery of North Korean missile remnants on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Jonah Leff, head of the United Kingdom-based Conflict Armament Research, which traces weapons used in conflicts, including Russia’s war on Ukraine, told the UNSC on Wednesday that remnants of four missiles from North Korea recovered in Ukraine in July and August had included one that indicated it was produced in 2024.
“This is the first public evidence of missiles having been produced in North Korea and then used in Ukraine within a matter of months, not years,” Leff told the council.
In June, Leff also briefed the UNSC that his organisation had “irrefutably” established that ballistic missile remnants found in Ukraine early this year were from a missile manufactured in North Korea.
The report on Russia’s use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine came as Pyongyang said its military alliance with Russia was proving “very effective” in deterring the United States and its “vassal forces”.
In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Washington and its allies were prolonging the war in Ukraine and destabilising the security situation in Europe and Asia Pacific.
The “madness” of the response by “hostile forces” indicated that increased cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow was effectively “deterring the US and the West’s ill-intended extension of influence”, the official said.
Russia and North Korea recently ratified a mutual defence pact and more than 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to help Russia in its war on Ukraine, according to US and South Korean officials.
Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in Russia. The statement on Thursday made no mention of North Korea’s involvement in Ukraine nor the heavy casualties that Ukrainian and US officials say North Korean troops have suffered in combat in the Kursk region of Russia.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday that the country’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said that at least 100 North Korean soldiers have been killed so far in the war and about 1,000 have been wounded.
The NIS told South Korean lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that North Korea’s inexperienced troops were being used by Russia as a “frontline assault force” and they were suffering casualties due to unfamiliarity with the terrain and lacked “the ability to respond to drone attacks” by Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on social media over the weekend that the losses being suffered by North Korean troops were “already noticeable”. South Korea, the US, the European Union and eight other countries signed a joint statement on Monday condemning North Korea’s growing involvement with Russia’s war in Ukraine, which, they said, constituted a “dangerous expansion of the conflict, with serious consequences for European and Indo-Pacific security”.
The US also voiced alarm at the UNSC meeting on Wednesday that Russia was close to accepting a nuclear-armed North Korea.
“Alarmingly, we assess that Russia may be close to accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, reversing Moscow’s decades-long commitment to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula,” US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said.
“We believe that Moscow will become more reluctant not only to criticise Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons but also further obstruct passage of sanctions or resolutions condemning North Korea’s destabilising behaviour,” she said.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, did not reference North Korea’s nuclear programme when he addressed the council. He defended the growing cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang as Russia’s sovereign right.
“Russian cooperation with the DPRK … is in accordance with international law, not in violation thereof,” he said, referring to North Korea by the acronym of its official name.
“This is not directed against any third countries. It does not pose any threat to states in the region or the international community, and have no doubt, we will continue to develop such cooperation,” he added.
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