By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
On his visit to North Korea, Vladimir Putin’s shopping list likely included the items he desperately needs to continue the war in Ukraine – artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles.
The Russian president arrived in Pyongyang Wednesday at the unconventional hour of 3 a.m. and was greeted warmly by the Hermit Kingdom’s “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un. As is customary on these visits, the two leaders were to sign pre-negotiated agreements on matters such as food, energy and security.
What wasn’t discussed publicly was how North Korea has become a munitions lifeline for Moscow more than two years after the invasion of Ukraine.
South Korea’s defense minister Shin Wonsik told Bloomberg News last week that North Korea has sent Russia shipping containers that could contain almost five million artillery shells. The Russians are believed to be acquiring 152mm artillery shells and rounds for 122mm multiple rocket launchers.
“While North Korea’s factories(for non-Russian exports) operate at 30 percent capacity due to shortages of raw materials and electricity, the factories producing weapons and artillery shells for Russia are operating at full capacity,” Shin said earlier this year in a briefing with reporters.
Putin also is likely to come back to Moscow with promises that North Korea will send more missiles.
Last month, the US Defense Intelligence Agency said that an analysis of debris imagery confirms that Russia has used North Korean missiles in Ukraine. An unclassified summary of the DIA report said that debris from North Korean solid-propellant short-range ballistic missiles had been discovered in the Kharkiv region in January.
According to a Reuters report, state prosecutors in Ukraine say they have looked at debris from 21 of 50 North Korean missiles they say that Russia launched.
Of course, Russian factories are still turning out munitions, and the bulk of the missiles Russia has fired at Ukraine come from its own plants. Still, it’s clear that the Kremlin’s defense industry can’t supply Russian forces on its own.
Ret. Gen. John Murray – Former Commanding General, Army Futures Command
One reason is that Russia is using up artillery shells at a much higher rate than Ukraine. Another is that Western sanctions have sharply reduced the amount of technology Russia can import for its defense factories.
As a result, Putin has looked to both North Korea and Iran for help.
Tehran has supplied Russia with thousands of relatively inexpensive Shahed-136 drones. Iran faces the same sort of sanctions that Russia does. But, according to a report last year from Conflict Armament Research, the drone is powered by a German engine whose technology was stolen by Iran two decades ago.
It’s estimated that North Korea is sending far more artillery shells to Russia than Ukraine is receiving from the West.
The European Union has promised to send a million shells to Kyiv by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has opened a new factory outside Dallas that will produce 30,000 shells a month, ranging from 155mm ammunition to mortar rounds.
Added to current production, that will allow the Defense Department to make 100,000 shells per month – a goal that was set to keep Ukrainian forces supplied. That’s almost ten times more than were being produced just a few years ago.
