Pyongyang: All just rumours
North Korea denies arms sales to Moscow
09/22/2022, 06:47 am
US authorities suspect that Russia could stock up on supplies in North Korea due to a shortage of ammunition. The government in Pyongyang denies and speaks of rumors. They have never delivered weapons or ammunition to the Kremlin and have no plans to do so, they say.
North Korea says it is not planning to sell arms or ammunition to Russia. In a statement, the Defense Ministry in Pyongyang accused the United States and other “hostile forces” of spreading rumors of an arms deal with Russia in order to damage North Korea’s image. “We have never exported arms or ammunition to Russia, and we have no plans to export them,” a senior official at the ministry’s equipment bureau was quoted as saying by the state-controlled media.
The ministry was responding to statements by the US government earlier this month that Russia was planning to buy munitions from North Korea on a large scale. The communications director of the National Security Council, John Kirby, spoke of millions of artillery shells and missiles that Moscow could possibly import from North Korea. He stressed that the United States had no evidence that such purchases had actually taken place.
It was only at the end of August that American intelligence circles announced that Iranian drones bought by Moscow had arrived in Russia. These could be used to fire on radar systems, artillery and other military objects – but had shown numerous malfunctions in initial tests.
Military experts suspected that Russia could be dependent on arms imports due to supply bottlenecks in the domestic arms industry. The bottlenecks are due to the international sanctions due to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. After the invasion, the largely isolated North Korea pledged its political support for the Moscow leadership’s course. Because of its nuclear weapons program, North Korea is itself subject to international sanctions and practically excluded from world trade.