2024-09-11T21:10:00+03:00 War 2024-09-22T04:00:02+03:00

Ukrainian news

Western components produced in 2023 found in North Korean missile debris - NYT

Western components produced in 2023 found in North Korean missile debris - NYT

North Korea supplied the aggressor country russia with a new batch of Hwasong-11 (KN-23) ballistic missiles, which the russian army systematically uses for strikes on the territory of Ukraine.

The American outlet of The New York Times reported this.

As the publication reports, on September 3 in Kyiv, experts from Conflict Armament Research, a British independent group engaged in the identification and tracking of weapons and ammunition, studied the wreckage of four North Korean missiles.

Experts deciphered the production markings on several parts of each missile.

A particular production year showed a very narrow window between production, transmission and use.

"That’s quite significant because we are talking about North Korea, a country that has been under sanction for almost two decades,” Damien Spleeters, who leads Conflict Armament Research’s operations in Ukraine, said in an interview.

He added that it also suggests that this was at least the second shipment of North Korean missiles to russia. According to him, the transfer of missiles in January "wasn’t a one-off".

Spleeters said the Hwasong-11 missiles used common commercially available electronic components manufactured by Western countries in 2023.

They were said to be similar to components found in many russian weapons examined by the group months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Spleeters stressed that such a discovery should not come as a surprise, given how russia has managed to develop advanced weapons while under international sanctions.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, in May of this year it became known that half of the North Korean missiles launched by the occupiers over Ukraine exploded in the air without reaching their targets.

Recall that in August, South Korean intelligence stated that North Korea doubled the supply of ammunition to russia.