It also shows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to lean on pariah countries to make up for deficiencies in his own arsenal as the war in Ukraine approaches its third calendar year.
“Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage and been forced to look to like-minded states for military equipment,” said a U.S. official, who partially attributed Russia’s limited options to sanctions imposed by Washington.
“Our information indicates that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea recently provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several dozen ballistic missiles — and Russia has launched multiple ballistic missiles into Ukraine,” the official said.
A second official said that the North Korean projectiles were short-range ballistic missiles that Moscow fired in late December and early January.
Michael Kofman, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russia’s war effort is being bolstered by imports of weaponry.
“Russia’s mobilized defense industrial production is now producing significantly more missiles per month than it was before the war, however, this is still not sufficient relative to its needs and can’t replace the stockpile of missiles its expended over the course of the last two years,” he said. “That means that Russia would benefit from having access to an additional stockpile from countries like North Korea.”
While officials said Pyongyang provided “several dozen ballistic missiles” thus far, it is unclear how the extent of weapons North Korea sent, or how much it plans to provide in the coming months.
In November, South Korea accused North Korea of supplying several types of missiles to Russia, including antitank missiles, portable anti-air missiles, ballistic missiles and rifles, rocket launchers, mortars and shells.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Russia began receiving shipments of North Korean ballistic missiles several weeks ago.
This is a developing story.
