North Korea has supplied millions of rockets and artillery shells to the Russian Ministry of Defense following the ballooning conflict in Ukraine, US intelligence reveals.
According to a U.S. official who talked to The New York Times under the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence conclusion,”the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions.”
According to the report, American intelligence experts think that Russia may eventually want to procure more North Korean armaments.
However, the U.S. official did not specify how many weapons Russia plans to buy from North Korea.
The revelation comes after the US recently discovered that the Russian military in August took delivery of Iranian-manufactured drones for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.
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Following the last week White House report, Russia has experienced technical issues with Iranian-made drones that it purchased from Tehran in August to deploy in its conflict with Ukraine.
The Biden administration claims that Russia likely acquired Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series UAVs over a period of days last month as part of a Russian plot to obtain hundreds of Iranian UAVs for deployment in Ukraine.
In recent months, North Korea has build ties with Russia while most of Europe and the West have retreated, blaming the United States for the Ukraine issue and criticizing the West’s “hegemonic policy” as justification for Russia’s military action in Ukraine to defend itself.
The North Koreans have also expressed interest in deploying laborers to assist in the reconstruction of the country’s eastern Russian-occupied territory.
The ambassador of North Korea to Moscow recently met with representatives from two separatist regions in Ukraine’s Donbas who are supported by Russia and expressed hope about cooperating in the “field of labor migration.”
North Korea became the only country, aside from Russia and Syria, to recognize the independence of Ukrainian territories Donetsk and Luhansk in July, further aligning itself with Russia in the Ukraine conflict.
According to U.N. resolutions, the North is not allowed to export to or import weapons from other nations, therefore sending weapons to Russia would be against the law.
A U.N. resolution requiring all members to return all North Korean workers from their territory by 2019 would be broken by the transfer of laborers to the Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine.
The action raises concerns that China and Russia have not completely upheld UN sanctions against North Korea, hampering a U.S.-led effort to deny North Korea access to its nuclear weapons.
Recently, the Korean president Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin exchanged letters in which they both urged “comprehensive” and “strategic and tactical” cooperation between their nations.
Moscow has published statements criticizing the resumption of significant military drills between the United States and South Korea this year, which North Korea perceives as a practice for an invasion.
