Ukrainian intel revealed another way North Korea has helped Russia

North Korea provided Russia with 148 KN-23 ballistic missiles for use against targets in Ukraine according to the head of Ukrainian intelligence. 

Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov shared the figure with The War Zone and revealed that another 150 KN-23s will be delivered to Moscow in 2025. 

The Ukrainian military website Militarnyi reported that KN-23 ballistic missiles have been used to attack targets in the Kursk and Bryansk regions and that North Korean experts are helping Russian forces use the missiles. 

According to a November 23rd report from CNN, Russia had launched roughly 60 North Korean KN-23 (Hwasong-11Ga) ballistic missiles at Ukraine since the beginning of 2024 based on figures from Ukraine's Defense Ministry. 

At the time. the KN-23s fired at Ukraine accounted for one-third of the 194 ballistic missiles that had been launched at targets in the country since the beginning of the year based on CNN’s tally of publicly acknowledged attacks. 

The biggest spike in missile strikes occurred in August and September. This was around the time when Ukraine first revealed that North Korean KN-23 missiles were being used by Russia on targets inside the country. 

The acting communications head of Ukrainian Air Forces Yuriy Ignatat the time told CNN Ukraine had seen since spring that “Russia has been using ballistic missiles and attack drones much more to strike Ukraine.”

Ignat also pointed out Russia had been reducing its use of cruise missiles. Whether or not Russia has been running low on cruise missiles is unknown, but the steady supply of KN-23s has allowed Moscow to keep the pressure on Ukraine. 

The KN-23 is a less sophisticated missile than the cruise missiles Moscow was using previously against Ukraine according to CNN. However, they are still a very dangerous weapon that dish out a lot of damage. 

According to Missile Threat, the KN-23 is a short-range ballistic missile first tested by North Korea in 2019. It has a maximum range of 690 kilometers (428 miles) and carries a 500-kilogram (1100-pound) payload. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By 朝鮮人民軍 - 朝鮮中央テレビ, Public Domain

The KN-23’s specifications make it roughly equivalent to Russia’s Iskander-M, a missile that was used in the deadly June 2023 attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk that killed 13 people and injured 65 more according to Reuters. 

More concerning than the growing use of the KN-23 against Ukraine was the fact the missile had been shown to include a host of Western components in the weapon, including the extensive use of U.S. and European circuitry in the missile’s guidance system. 

Critical components found in the debris of KN-23s fired at Ukraine show that they hailed from nine Western companies, including from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States according to Ukraine’s Independent Anti-Corruption Commission. 

“Everything that works to guide the missile, to make it fly, is all foreign components. All the electronics are foreign. There is nothing Korean in it,” Andriy Kulchytskyi, the head of the Military Research Laboratory at Kyiv’s Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, told CNN. 

“The only thing Korean is the metal, which quickly rusts and corrodes,” Kulchytskyi added, and he wasn’t wrong. According to an official who spoke to CNN from Ukraine's Defense Intelligence, the vast majority of parts in the KN-23 could be Western-made. 

While the unnamed official conceded that the missile debris Kyiv had recovered had hampered efforts to identify the internal components, they noted, “the vast majority of components are Western components.”

“Probably 70% are American, from well-known companies… They also use components made in Germany and Switzerland,” the official explained. A previous report by the arms control group  Conflict Armament Research (CAR) has reported a similar figure.

The UK-based CAR noted in a February 2024 report that about 75% of the components in one of the first North Korean missiles fired at Ukraine by Russia were Western-made by companies based in the United States, which shows the worrying nature of the problem that Ukraine and the world face. 

Never miss a story! Click here to follow The Daily Digest.

Photo Credit: Conflict Armament Research