North's artillery shells fueling Russia's war in Ukraine

Ammunition supplies from North Korea, coupled with Russia’s domestic production of artillery shells, will “allow Russian forces to sustain sufficient rates of artillery fire in Ukraine” next year, according to the Institute of the Study of War.

In this footage released by the North's state-controlled Korean Central Television, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during the latter's visit to Pyongyang on Oct. 19. [YONHAP]

Increased ammunition supplies from North Korea, coupled with Russia’s domestic production of artillery shells, will “likely allow Russian forces to sustain sufficient rates of artillery fire in Ukraine” next year, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Institute of the Study of War (ISW).

The ISW’s report cited Col. Ants Kiviselg, the chief of the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center, who estimated that Russia still has around four million artillery shells that its forces can use to conduct “low intensity” warfare for an additional year.

Kiviselg estimated that North Korea may have provided 300,000-500,000 pieces of ammunition to Russia, which can last up to one month at the current daily consumption rate of around 10,000 shells a day.

His estimate of North Korean arms imports was based on media reports on satellite intelligence showing that Pyongyang shipped around 1,000 containers of supplies — likely including artillery ammunition — after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a rare summit in the Russian Far East last month.

The ISW report noted the Ukrainian military analyst Colonel Petro Chernyk’s observation that the Russian military is currently firing between 10,000-15,000 shells a day, significantly lower than the rates of fire in summer 2022 of 45,000-80,000 shells per day.

But the ISW also predicted that the North is likely to deliver more arms shipments to Russia, citing Western sources and satellite imagery that appear to show that North Korean deliveries of suspected artillery shells “have drastically increased since Russian and North Korean authorities likely began more official military-technical cooperation in September.”

Based on its analysis, Western estimates of Russian artillery production capacity and North Korean artillery shipments, ISW predicted that Russia “will likely be able to maintain generally sufficient rates of fire in the foreseeable future.”

Although the institute said the overall decrease in Russian fire rates “could impede the ability of Russian forces to conduct large scale offensive operations,” it also predicted that “Russian forces are unlikely to face widespread shortages which would chronically undermine defensive operations” and that their lower rate of fire “will not inherently provide Ukrainian forces an advantage.”

North Korea is one of the few countries that has expressed unequivocal support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Kim offering his “full and unconditional support” to Putin’s “sacred fight” against what he characterized as “hegemonic forces.”

During his visit to Pyongyang on Oct. 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and thanked North Korea for backing his country’s invasion of Ukraine, signaling that Moscow and Pyongyang could draw even closer during an evening reception to mark his visit.

His visit followed Kim and Putin’s meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome spaceport and Kim’s subsequent tour of two Russian aircraft factories, which heightened speculation that Russia could provide the North with advanced military and satellite reconnaissance technology in return for much-needed materiel and ammunition to continue its war in Ukraine.

During his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol warned that an arms deal between Moscow and Pyongyang would be perceived as a threat to Seoul.

“It is paradoxical that a permanent member of the UN Security Council, entrusted as the ultimate guardian of world peace, would wage war by invading another sovereign nation and receive arms and ammunition from a regime that blatantly violates UN Security Council resolutions,” Yoon said, in reference to Russia.

The South Korean president also said information and technology transfers from Russia to the North in exchange for conventional weapons would constitute a “direct provocation” threatening the peace and security of not only Ukraine but also South Korea.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]