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, The Guardian reports.
An unpublished UK defence intelligence report shows imagery taken between September and December of three Russian ships loading containers at North Korea’s revived Najin port before transiting to Russian ports in the far east.
While the agency said it could not identify what was in the containers, it followed a US announcement last week that ballistic missiles from North Korea had been used by Russia in Ukraine last week.
"Russia’s use of North Korean weapons in Ukraine is a violation of multiple UN security council resolutions,” said a UN diplomat. “It undermines international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and exposes just how desperate Russia has become in its failed invasion. This and other evidence submitted to the UN sanctions committee should trigger a full investigation into Russia and DPRK’s [North Korea’s] flagrant breaking of international sanctions," said one UN diplomat.
The report, along with other evidence from the United States and other countries, was provided to the UN panel of experts on North Korean proliferation, which is expected next month to publish its first final report since suspected North Korean shipments of ammunition to Russia sharply increased this year.
The ships in the report were all placed under sanctions by the US government in 2022 for their links to the Russian ministry of defence’s shipping company, Oboronlogistika OOO, which has “been involved in Russia’s illegal seizure and occupation of Crimea since 2014, as well as private Russian maritime shipping companies that transport weapons and other military equipment for the [government of Russia]”.
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”.
Prosecutors in Kharkiv told that suspected fragments of North Korean-made Iskander missiles had been sent to Kyiv for analysis and said the missiles had subtle differences: hand-drawn lettering for serial numbers, and a different nozzle exhaust cone and welding.