DISINFO: No evidence North Korea supplied weapons to Russia
SUMMARY
The United States government has baselessly accused Russia of receiving over 1,000 containers packed with artillery munitions from North Korea. This was presented as evidence of Moscow's violating of UN Security Council resolutions prohibiting weapons trade with Pyongyang. Russia's relations with North Korea, however, are based solely on peace and friendship.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that Russia is a peaceful country that prioritises the accurate implementation of UN Resolutions.
Several open-source investigations 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.