15-04-2025
Inside North Korea's elaborate operation to help Russia's war on Ukraine
The Reuters investigation shows the extent of Russia's reliance upon North Korean shells on the battlefield, which helped it pursue a war of attrition that Ukraine has struggled to match. At times over the past year, the vast majority of shells fired by some Russian units were from North Korea, Reuters found.
An analysis of sea and land shipments by the Open Source Center in conjunction with Reuters was confirmed by Russian artillery reports intercepted by Kyiv, satellite imagery and verified social media videos, as well as three senior Ukrainian government and military sources.
North Korea has also dispatched ballistic missiles as well as long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. Its deliveries represent the most significant direct military aid to Russia's war effort, which has also benefited from Iranian long-range drone technology and close economic support from China.
The Open Source Center, or OSC, an independent UK-based research organization focused on security, tracked 64 shipments over 20 months carrying nearly 16,000 containers and millions of artillery rounds for use against Ukraine, including a shipment as recent as March 17.
The military partnership between North Korea and Russia came to light in 2023. It took on new importance in recent weeks, when North Korean troops, weapons systems and ammunition bolstered Russian firepower to evict the remnants of Ukraine's incursion in Russia's Kursk region just as the Trump administration was pulling support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials, including the military intelligence chief, have said North Korea is supplying half the munitions Russia needs at the front — a quantity consistent with the findings by both OSC and Reuters. One expert in the Ukrainian military told Reuters that the North Korean contribution was as high as 70 percent, and Reuters found that at times Russian artillery units were almost wholly reliant upon North Korean munitions.
'North Korea's contribution has been strategically vital,' said Hugh Griffiths, who from 2014 to 2019 was coordinator of the UN panel of experts that monitored sanctions on North Korea. 'Without Chairman Kim Jong Un's support, President Vladimir Putin wouldn't really be able to prosecute his war in Ukraine.'
Though Western military support for Ukraine has kept it in the war since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, including a Czech initiative to supply 1.6 million rounds of ammunition, that aid has been inconsistent and of late appears increasingly uncertain.
At no point has any Ukrainian ally offered up its own soldiers to fight.
By January, around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded fighting against Ukrainian forces since they first arrived in Kursk in late autumn, according to a South Korean security source. North Korea sent 3,000 more men by mid-February – and the reinforcements were better prepared, said Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of Ukraine's 225th Separate Assault Regiment, which has been fighting in Kursk.
'They adapted to modern combat conditions,' Shyriaiev recalled.
Ukraine's military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said in late February that North Korea also supplied 120 long-range self-propelled artillery systems and 120 multiple launch rocket systems to Russia beginning in late 2024, including some filmed by Ukrainian drones in Kursk.
Russia's recent victories in Kursk come at a crucial time. US President Donald Trump says he wants a quick end to the war, and Ukraine had hoped that holding Russian territory would strengthen its hand in negotiations.
But now only a tiny pocket of Kursk remains under Ukrainian control.
North Korea's delegations at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and its embassy in London, did not respond to detailed questions about Reuters' findings, nor did Russia's Defense Ministry or South Korea's National Intelligence Service and Ministry of National Defense.
Shared border, shared history
Russia and North Korea share a short border and a history.
Kim Il Sung, who fought in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War, became North Korea's first leader and received Soviet support during the Korean War and beyond. He ruled until his death in 1994, starting the dynasty that remains in power.
In 1959, the countries commissioned a 'Friendship Bridge' for trains crossing the Tumen River, which marks the border they share, a stone's throw from the Chinese frontier. Relations cooled after the Soviet Union's collapse.
The two countries' ties warmed again as Russia found itself increasingly politically and economically isolated over the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine's first counteroffensive in late 2022 forced Russia into retreat from vast swathes of Ukrainian land. Russia spent the next six months digging trenches, laying mines and erecting defensive structures. That combination stalled Ukraine's second counteroffensive in summer 2023, and the war became one of attrition in which both sides have tried to outgun and outkill each other.
Since the war's beginning, Russia has had more soldiers and firepower than Ukraine, in addition to its enormous military industrial capacity. Putin has not backed down in his goals, claiming a vast portion of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory is, in fact, Russia.
But by 2023, in a throwback to the trench warfare of the First World War, artillery and mortar fire became the keys to holding territory and prising the enemy from defensive positions. Whoever had the most shells would have a major advantage.
At that point, military experts estimated that both Russia and Ukraine were at times firing 10,000 artillery rounds a day, exhausting their supplies.
Ukraine's allies in Europe, the United States and Asia continued to scour the world and their own stocks for shells, helping a much smaller army compete with Russia.
Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu travelled to Pyongyang in July 2023 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice. He and Kim discussed closer military cooperation.
Already in September 2023, ships started carrying hundreds of containers from the North Korean port of Rajin to the eastern Russian ports of Dunai and Vostochny, according to the OSC, which monitors daily satellite images of the ships.
The United States has said the containers held armaments that were loaded onto trains for transport thousands of kilometers away to weapons depots in western Russia. At the end of 2023, a Ukrainian government assessment seen by Reuters found that the Cold War-era Friendship Bridge was being used, along with much bigger deliveries by ship.
First reported by the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank in October 2023, the shipments expanded rapidly over the following months and the OSC has tracked them since their inception. Deliveries peaked in January 2024, with seven shipments crossing into Russia, before dropping to a monthly average of around three through March 2025.
