U.S. Russia wants to buy North Korean arms
IAEA report urges security zone around key nuclear facility
WASHINGTON — The Russian Ministry of Defense is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for its fight in Ukraine, according to a newly downgraded U.S. intelligence finding.
Meanwhile, the U.N. atomic watchdog agency released a detailed report Tuesday on its visit to the Zaporizhzhia power plant that urged Russia and Ukraine to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the facility amid mounting fears the fighting could trigger a catastrophe in a country still scarred by the Chernobyl disaster.
“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council, days after leading an inspection visit to the plant.
Noting that shelling around Europe’s largest
nuclear power plant should stop immediately, the IAEA report said: “This requires agreement by all relevant parties to the establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the plant.
At the Security Council meeting, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres likewise demanded that Russian and Ukrainian forces commit to halting all military activity around the plant and agree on a “demilitarized perimeter.”
Guterres said this would include “a commitment by Russian forces to withdraw all military personnel and equipment from that perimeter
and a commitment by Ukrainian forces not to move into it.”
Asked by reporters about establishing a demilitarized zone, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the proposal “is not serious.”
“The Ukrainians will immediately step in and ruin the whole thing. We’re defending, we’re protecting the station,” he said. “In fact, it is not militarized. There is no equipment at the station.”
He said the only Russians there are guarding the plant.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered qualified praise for the IAEA’s report.
In his nightly address
to the nation, Zelenskyy approved of the report’s “clear references” to the presence of Russian troops and military equipment at the plant.
He also called for a more robust mandate for the IAEA and urged the agency to explicitly back Kyiv’s long-held claim that Russian forces need to withdraw from the facility and its surroundings.
Regarding the Kremlin’s efforts to purchase arms, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Tuesday that “the information that we have is that Russia has specifically asked for ammunition.” He said the U.S. has seen indications Russia approached North Korea, but said he had no other details, including whether money has changed hands or any shipments are in progress.
“It does demonstrate and is indicative of the situation that Russia finds itself in, in terms of its logistics and sustainment capabilities as it relates to Ukraine,” said Ryder, in the administration’s first public comments on the intelligence assessment. “We assess that things are not going well on that front for Russia.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there were no indications that the arms purchase had actually occurred yet or that any North Korean munitions had made it onto the Ukrainian battlefield. Still, he said the talks alone were “just another indication of how desperate Putin’s becoming.”
“He was buying drones from Iran, now he’s going to buy artillery rounds from from North Korea. It’s an indication of how much his defense industrial establishment is suffering as a result of this war and the degree of desperation that he’s reaching out to countries like Iran and North Korea for assistance,” he told reporters Tuesday.
Asked why the information was declassified, Ryder said it’s relevant to illustrate the condition of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. And, he said, it shows “they’re trying to reach out to international actors like Iran and North Korea that don’t have the best record when it comes to international stability.”
The intelligence finding was first reported by The New York Times.
The North’s arms export to Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban the country from exporting to or importing weapons from other countries.
Shelling continued around the Zaporizhzhia plant on Tuesday, a day after it was again knocked off Ukraine’s electrical grid and put in the precarious position of relying on its own power to run its safety systems.
Normally the plant relies on power from the outside to run the critical cooling systems that keep its reactors and its spent fuel from overheating. A loss of those systems could lead to a meltdown or other release of radiation.