Cold War allies rekindle ties

Seoul — Russia could be about to buy millions of artillery shells and rockets from old Cold-War ally North Korea, the White House said, an allegation immediately dismissed as “fake” by Russia’s ambassador to the UN.

North Korea has a history of exporting weapons — many of which are based on Soviet or Russian designs — and could provide Russia with a range of conventional small arms, according to military experts.

Here is what is known about North Korea’s weapons industry, its stockpiles of conventional ammunition, and its defence exports.

What weapons could it provide?

North Korea has a huge stockpile of artillery shells and rockets of Soviet-era munitions that date back to the 1950s, said Hugh Griffiths, a former co-ordinator for a UN panel of experts that monitors sanctions on the country, and is now an independent sanctions consultant.

“The North Koreans do have tremendous stockpiles of relatively primitive artillery and rocket systems some of which are of a similar type and calibre used by the Russians to shell Ukrainian cities and towns,” he said.

Among the most likely weapons could be 107mm Katyusha rockets, 122mm rocket launchers, 155mm or 122mm artillery shells, or other small-arms ammunition for machine guns or automatic rifles, said Bruce Bechtol, a professor at Angelo State University in Texas, who has researched North Korea’s arms sales.

“Everything North Korea makes is basically a copy of old Soviet systems,” he said. Even with sanctions, it did not make sense that Russia would be unable to produce such weapons itself, Bechtol added.

If Russia was bypassing its other supply chain sources to go to North Korea, then either the situation was far worse for the Russian military than thought, or it was preparing for a major offensive that required extra supplies, he said.

History of weapons sales

The potential deal described by US officials on Tuesday would be a large one for North Korea but would not be unprecedented, Bechtol said.

“They sold an awful lot of ammunition to Syria and Iran, and to Hezbollah during the Syrian civil war,” he said.

The panel of experts has in recent years accused North Korea of dodging sanctions to supply weapons to Syria and Myanmar, including chemical weapon supplies, ballistic missile components, and conventional weapons such as multiple rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles.

“Time and time again one may witness the desperation of the North Koreans to raise foreign currency revenue or obtain sanctioned commodities such oil,” Griffiths said.

How might it happen?

A deal with Russia could be bigger than many of those previous shipments, but easier from a logistics standpoint, the experts said.

The deal would be a sanctions violation and therefore ships could be subject to seizure while at sea, so North Korea is likely to send any arms to Russia by rail across their common border, Bechtol said.

Griffiths said it would be much less risky for the North Koreans to smuggle munitions illegally into Russia than it is for them to send military equipment or munitions via sea or air to Myanmar or Syria, for example.

“The North Koreans would not be hesitant to deplete their stockpiles for such an important and unusual client,” he said.

Reuters