The head of a research organization that has been tracing weapons used in attacks in Ukraine since 2018 on Friday told the UN Security Council it has “irrefutably” established that ballistic missile remnants found in Ukraine came from North Korea.
The US and its Western allies clashed with Russia and North Korea at the meeting, saying both countries contravened a UN embargo on arms exports from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the country’s official name.
Russia dismissed the “baseless accusations,” and North Korea dismissed the meeting as “an extremely brazen act” to discuss “someone’s alleged ‘weapon transfers.’”
Photo: AP
Jonah Leff, director of operations at Conflict Armament Research, gave the council a detailed analysis of the remnants of the missile that struck Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Jan. 2.
The organization documented the missile’s rocket motor, its tail section and almost 300 components manufactured by 26 companies from eight countries and territories, and determined the missile was either a KN-23 or KN-24 manufactured last year in North Korea, Leff said.
The organization reached its conclusion based on the missile’s unique characteristics — its diameter, distinct jet vane actuators that direct the missile’s thrust and trajectory, the pattern around the igniter, the presence of Korean characters on some rocket components, and other marks and components dating back to last year, he said.
“Following the initial documentation, our teams inspected three additional identical DPRK missiles that struck Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia earlier this year,” Leff said.
The council discussed illegal arms transfers from North Korea at the request of France, Japan, South Korea, the UK and the US.
The meeting followed Russia’s March 28 veto that ended the monitoring of sanctions against North Korea over its expanding nuclear program by a UN panel of experts. The US and its European and Asian allies accused Moscow of seeking to avoid scrutiny as it allegedly contravenes sanctions to buy weapons from Pyongyang for its war in Ukraine.
US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood called Leff’s presentation with its many technical details “quite compelling,” and told the council that while Russia might have ended the panel’s monitoring with China’s “tacit support,” the briefing showed that Moscow and Beijing “cannot prevent the public from learning about the unlawful arms transfers occurring between the DPRK and Russia.”
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the meeting’s Western sponsors of attempting to use the Security Council “to trot out an anti-Russian and anti-North Korean narrative and to disseminate baseless accusations in order to detract attention from their own destructive actions, which foment escalation in the region.”
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for resuming production of intermediate-range missiles that were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019.
“We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” Putin said at a meeting of the Russian Security Council.
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