Russia ‘gifts battlefield laboratory for weapon tests’
Situation deteriorating after weeks of Russian strikes on the energy system, towns and cities
Russia’s use of North Korean missiles in its assault in Ukraine is giving Pyongyang a rare chance to test its weapons in combat and perhaps take away lessons that could improve their performance, according to a top US general.
“I don’t believe that in my recent memory that the North Korean military has had a battlefield laboratory quite like the Russians are affording them to have in Ukraine,” said General Charles Flynn, the US Army Pacific’s commanding general.
That gives North Korea an opportunity to gain valuable information in technical matters, procedures and the munitions themselves.
The United States would be watching closely how this unfolded, Flynn said on Saturday during a visit to the sprawling US Army Garrison Humphreys, about 80km south of Seoul. Flynn said a great concern for him and others was that Pyongyang would be able to learn things about their weapons “they would otherwise not have access to absent a conflict” like the war in Ukraine.
The US would deploy missile systems with mid-range capability to the Indo-Pacific region soon, Flynn said, without giving further details on timing or locations.
Such a move could draw the ire of China, which in 2019 warned US allies in the region risked countermeasures if they accepted the deployment of intermediate-range US missiles.
The US, South Korea and others have accused North Korea of sending to Russia its newest nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that are easy to hide, quick to deploy and hard to shoot down.
Images provided by the US indicate they are Hwasong-11s, a wide class of short-range ballistic missile that can reliably hit targets with a high degree of precision, according to weapons experts.
They have ranges of 380km to 800km and increase the pool of weapons Russian President Vladimir Putin can draw upon.
Prosecutors in Kharkiv last month said Russian forces had fired North Korean missiles at Ukraine about 50 times since the start of the invasion, providing documentation for what it said included a Hwasong-11 family missile, specialist service NK News reported.
The North Korean missiles sent so far are similar in size and flight dynamics to Russia’s Iskander series, weapons experts have said. A report last year by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies showed the US Patriot air defence system had so far been largely effective in countering Russia’s missiles.
US allies South Korea and Japan deploy Patriot batteries. These systems have a powerful radar able to track as many as 100 targets including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
The US, South Korea, Japan and Europe have accused North Korea of sending huge amounts of munitions to Russia, which are interoperable with the Soviet-era systems being used in Ukraine.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the charges despite satellite photos released by research groups and the US government showing the flow of weapons from North Korea to Russia and then to munitions dumps near the border with Ukraine.
Ukraine could run out of air defence missiles if Russia keeps up its intense long-range bombing campaign, President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned.
The Ukrainian leader’s starkest warning to date of the deteriorating situation faced by his country’s air defences follows weeks of Russian strikes on the energy system, towns and cities using a broad arsenal of missiles and drones.
“If they keep hitting [Ukraine] every day the way they have for the last month, we might run out of missiles, and the partners know it,” he said in an interview that aired on Ukrainian television.
Zelensky, who has been appealing to allies for weeks to rush in more air defences, said that Ukraine had enough stockpiles to cope for the moment, but that it was already having to make difficult choices about what to protect. He singled out in particular the need for Patriot air defence systems and said Ukraine needed 25 of them.
The sophisticated US system has been vital during Russian attacks with ballistic and hypersonic missiles which can hit targets within a matter of minutes. His remarks followed a fresh spate of attacks that Ukrainian officials said killed civilians.
Two Russian missile and drone strikes, one in the early hours of Saturday and a second in the afternoon, killed eight people and wounded at least 10 more people in northeastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
In the eastern region of Donetsk, artillery shelling killed four people in the village of Kurakhivka including a 38-yearold woman and her 16-year-old daughter, and a 25-year-old man in the village of Krasnohorivka was killed. In Odesa, in the south, a missile strike killed one civilian.
Ukraine’s largest private power company DTEK says the strikes had hit 80 per cent of its generating capacity and the grid has introduced rolling blackouts to stabilise the system.
Battlefield momentum has moved against Ukraine in recent months as Kyiv grappled with a slowdown in military aid from the West and in particular from the United States.
“The situation is difficult, but nevertheless stabilised. The enemy does not advance: when it takes steps forward, ours repel [them], and it retreats. On the contrary, our guys are taking some steps forward,” Zelensky said.
He said he still believed an aid package would be approved by the US Congress, where it has been stuck in deliberations since late last year facing determined Republican opposition.
“I still believe that we can get a positive vote in the United States Congress,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of Ukraine receiving the package in the form of a loan, he said: “We will agree to any options.”
He added that some artillery shells were being supplied to Ukraine under foreign initiatives that he did not name and that they were being used for defensive operations. “We don’t have shells for counteroffensive actions, as for the defence – there are several initiatives, and we’re receiving weapons,” he said.
The interview was recorded next to a military fortification in northeastern Chernihiv region, which borders Russia. It was not clear which day the interview was recorded, but Zelensky met a bipartisan group of members of Congress in the region on Friday.
I still believe that we can get a positive vote in the United States Congress PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY