Russia has started using ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea to attack Ukraine, Washington and Kyiv have claimed, in an indication that Moscow plans to further expand its arms deals with regimes under sanctions in order to sustain its war effort.
Washington also alleged Russia was in talks with Iran to buy short-range ballistic missiles. The US intelligence assessment is that Iranian missiles have not yet arrived in Russia, but that the deal will eventually be done.
The US reports were endorsed by several Ukrainian officials, including an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration, who said that Russian arms deals with Pyongyang and Tehran made the country part of a new “axis of evil of the [21st] century”.
John Kirby, the US’s national security council spokesperson, said on Thursday that Russia fired a North Korean ballistic missile into Ukraine on 30 December but that it landed in an open field. However, Kirby said Russian forces had launched more such missiles as part of a large salvo on 2 January, and their impact had yet to be assessed.
Russia is looking to North Korea and Iran to replenish its stockpiles of weaponry, including Soviet-era artillery shells and loitering munitions. Both Moscow and Kyiv are in a race to rearm after nearly two years of war, with Ukraine turning to western allies led by Washington, while Russia has sought out other pariah states with little to lose.
South Korean intelligence officials said in November that Pyongyang had already shipped more than 1m artillery shells to Russia, and leaked documents have shown Iran helping to build a factory for Shahed-136 drones inside Russia’s Tatarstan region.
“Due in part to our sanctions and export controls, Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage, and they’ve been forced to look to like-minded states for military equipment. As we’ve been warning publicly, one of those states is North Korea,” Kirby told reporters at the White House, adding that it was a “significant and concerning escalation” in Pyongyang’s support for Moscow.
The governor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region said that Russia had used foreign-made missiles in a salvo earlier this week.
“We are conducting all the necessary examinations,” Oleh Syniehubov told the public broadcaster, Suspilne. “I will say for now that the markings have been erased from these missiles, but what we can see … the country which produced it is not the Russian Federation.”
A Ukrainian air force official on Friday said that Ukraine had not yet confirmed if Russia had used North Korean-made missiles, indicating that the main source for the allegations was from Washington. But other officials in Kyiv have endorsed the report.
“Never before in history has the classic ‘axis of evil’ looked so obviously, grotesquely villainous: #Russia – #Iran – #NorthKorea,” wrote Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration.
Kirby said the range of the North Korean missiles was 900km (560 miles), and that in return for the weapons, Russia was expected to supply fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armoured vehicles, ballistic missile production equipment and other advanced technologies.
“This would have concerning security implications for the Korean peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region,” he said.
Kirby added that Iran had already demonstrated its close-range ballistic missile capabilities to visiting Russian military officials, though no such missile deliveries to Russia had been detected so far.
“The United States is concerned that Russian negotiations to acquire close-range ballistic missiles from Iran are actively advancing,” he said. “We assess that Russia intends to purchase missile systems from Iran.”
Kirby said the US would impose sanctions on those involved in facilitating the arms transfer, and take the matter of Russia’s weapons trade with North Korea to the UN as a violation of an international arms embargo.
He argued that Moscow’s foreign arms acquisition should serve as a reminder to Congress of the costs of its failure to pass a Ukraine arms supply package before Christmas.
“Russia is relying upon its friends to be able to restore its military stockpiles and enable its war against Ukraine,” Kirby said. “Iran and [North Korea] are standing with Russia. Ukrainians deserve to know that the American people and this government will continue to stand with them.
“So it’s critical that Congress meets this moment and responds by providing Ukraine with what they need to defend themselves. The time for Congress to act is now.”
