cnn
Ukraine has been hit by a surge in Russian ballistic missile attacks, about a third of which used North Korean weapons that can only fly because they run on Western circuitry, obtained despite sanctions, according to Ukrainian military officials.
Russia has fired about 60 North Korean KN-23 missiles at Ukraine this year, according to a Ukrainian defense official. That accounts for nearly one in three of the 194 ballistic missiles fired so far in 2024, a CNN tally of attacks publicly acknowledged by Ukraine’s air force shows.
Crucial components used in the North Korean missiles are produced by nine Western manufacturers, including companies based in the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, according to a recent report by Ukraine’s Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO), a civil society organization. Some parts of the KN-23/24 missiles they analyzed were produced as recently as 2023, suggesting a swift delivery pipeline to North Korea.
“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,” said Andriy Kulchytskyi, head of the Military Research Laboratory of Kyiv’s Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise.