Russia
A US security spokesman says new evidence suggests Moscow is offering the “rogue” nation food in exchange for dozens of types of weapons and ammunition
Associated Press
Fri 31 Mar 2023 01:29 BST
The White House says it has new evidence that Russia is once again searching for arms and ammunition in North Korea to fuel the war in Ukraine, this time under a deal that would provide Pyongyang with much-needed food and other goods in return.
It’s the latest accusation that Russia, desperate for weapons and constrained by sanctions and export controls, is turning to “rogue” states to help it continue its 13-month-old war.
“Under this proposed deal, Russia would receive over two dozen types of weapons and ammunition from Pyongyang,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday. “We also understand that Russia is trying to send a delegation to North Korea and that Russia is offering North Korea food in exchange for ammunition.”
The war in Ukraine is deepening Russia’s ties with North Korea and Iran
Experts believe North Korea’s food situation is the worst it has been under Kim Jong-un’s 11-year rule, but see no signs of imminent famine or mass deaths. Kim has vowed to strengthen state control over agriculture and take a number of other steps to increase grain production, North Korean state media reported earlier this month.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that US intelligence had hinted that China was considering supplying arms and ammunition to Russia, although White House officials said they still had no evidence Beijing was making the arms shipments.
Reports surfaced last year that Russia’s ambassador to Pyongyang was proposing North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine to help rebuild war-ravaged infrastructure.
Alexander Matsegora said that despite UN sanctions, there are potentially “many opportunities” for economic cooperation between the North and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s Donbass region.
Earlier Thursday, the Treasury Ministry’s Office for Control of Foreign Assets announced sanctions against a Slovak citizen, Ashot Mkrtychev, who claimed he was trying to facilitate arms deals between Russia and North Korea.
Kirby said Mkrtychev is at the heart of the new deal between North Korea and Russia, which has yet to be finalized. He added that the US has no evidence that Mkrtychev was involved in the earlier arms supply to Russia’s Wagner Group, whose mercenaries were at the center of a month-long struggle for the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.
Between late 2022 and early 2023, the Treasury Ministry said Mkrtychev worked with North Korean officials to procure over two dozen types of weapons and ammunition for Russia in exchange for airliners, raw materials and goods to be sent to North Korea.
Mkrtychev worked with a Russian citizen to find commercial aircraft to deliver goods to North Korea in exchange.
“Russia has lost over 9,000 items of heavy military equipment since the war began, and thanks in part to multilateral sanctions and export controls, Putin is increasingly desperate to replace them,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Schemes such as the arms deal pursued by this person show that Putin is turning to suppliers of last resort such as Iran and the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].”
Any arms deal with Russia would be in violation of UN resolutions prohibiting North Korea from exporting or importing arms from other countries.
North Korea is the only nation, along with Russia and Syria, to recognize the independence of the Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The publication of Russia’s efforts to get arms from North Korea is just the latest example of the Biden administration relaxing restrictions on intelligence findings and making them public as the war in Ukraine unfolds.
The government has previously released intelligence to present evidence that Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia over the summer and that the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, received arms shipments from North Korea to bolster its armed forces while they on the side Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine.
The government has said it was trying to disseminate intelligence findings so that allies and the public would have a clear view of Moscow’s intentions and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would think twice about his actions.
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