DISINFO: Western media spread fakes about North Korean missiles used against Ukraine
SUMMARY
Reuters reported that some three experts allegedly provided a report to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee with a conclusion that the debris from a missile found at the site of a January 2 strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv belongs to a North Korea Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile.
This document is fake. No such report was ever submitted to the UN Security Council. The West has yet to produce any evidence that Moscow received North Korean munitions, despite repeatedly making such claims.
RESPONSE
The claim is part of an ongoing pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The original Reuters report, mentioned but not sourced by Sputnik, explains in detail how the report was compiled and what its findings were. The 32-page document does not state that the munitions had been launched from Russian territory, but it does conclude that the debris recovered in Kharkiv belonged to a North Korea-manufactured Hwasong-11 (Aka KN-23) short-range ballistic missile. The report further "found no evidence that the missile was made by Russia" [emphasis added], plausibly indicating that it had been procured by Russia from North Korea in violation of the UN sanctions regime.
This was preceded by several open-source investigations, published in late 2023, which have painted a comprehensive picture of North Korea's illegal munitions deliveries to Russia. The two countries have used railways and multiple Russia-registered ships to carry weapons cargo from manufacturing locations across North Korea to two ports in Russia's Far East, an operation ongoing since at least August 2023. Several Russian entities assessed to have facilitated these deliveries had already been sanctioned by Western governments for aiding the Russian Ministry of Defence in conducting armed operations in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Once in Russia, the weapons travelled by train to an artillery depot in Tikhoretsk, approximately 200km from the border with Ukraine. An investigation published in late October 2023 suggests that some 2,000 weapons containers made their way to Russia from North Korea, and estimates that the total number of artillery rounds shipped surpasses 500,000.
See other disinformation cases about weapons here as well as similar cases No evidence of North Korea supplying artillery shells to Russia and No evidence North Korea supplied weapons to Russia.