Two of the three ships were also identified in a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute thinktank. It showed a growth in transshipments from North Korea to Russia that “reveal that Russia has likely begun shipping North Korean munitions at scale”. A third was identified by NK News, an independent news website focusing on North Korea, as “part of a group of commercial vessels that have completed multiple deliveries of military equipment and munitions provided by the DPRK to Russia”.
I actually see this as good news for Ukraine.
It shows that Russia has exceeded its own capacity for producing munitions and having to reach out of others for such a basic product. Further, reports from Russian soldiers using North Korean artillery shells report how poorly they’re constructed which makes them many times ineffective, but also dangerous to Russians firing them.
Performance is inconsistent from one shot to the next, which is horrible for something you have to fire again and again to zero in on your target. Other shells are simply exploding in barrels damaging Russian guns and wounding Russian operators.
I hope Russia switches exclusively to North Korean shells.
my fear is that we all know they’re practically incapable of winning the war with the West, but they seem to be making progress on the esponiage/propaganda dimension.
One question I’d have is if they are manufacturing these new themselves locally or reselling Russia old Soviet stock piles.
Domestically produced in North Korea.
There was a picture showing the North Korean shells next to Russian and Chinese. Not only were the manufacturing tolerances no where close to Soviet Standards, but the date codes on the shell showed manufacturing post Soviet collapse.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The UK has provided satellite photographs of North Korean cargo shipments to Russia to a panel of UN experts as part of an attempt to trigger an official investigation into arms deals in violation of international sanctions.
North Korea has been accused of supplying ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to the Russian government for its war in Ukraine since Vladimir Putin met with Kim Jong-un in Russia’s far east in September.
Putin met the North Korean foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, in the Kremlin this week during a rare, five-day trip by the senior Pyongyang official.
“I think the nature of North Korea as a threat in the region could drastically change over the coming decade as a result of this cooperation,” he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank.
Before the meeting with Putin, a member of the North Korean delegation was photographed with a document apparently titled Observation List in Space Technology Field, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
The list appeared to include the Progress Rocket Space Centre and the Voronezh mechanical plant, known to produce engines, although the writing was not completely clear, the news agency wrote.
The original article contains 777 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
