Photo : YONHAP News
North Korea has reportedly deployed munitions engineers to a Russian-occupied region of Ukraine to perform quality control on the ammunition it has supplied to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
According to Ukraine’s Kyiv Post on Monday, Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said North Korean troops were deployed to the Donetsk region to identify defects in the ammunition the North had supplied to Russia and to monitor its use.
Kovalenko reportedly said the munitions engineers account for most of the North Korean military presence in the region, owing to the poor quality of the ammunition that North Korea supplies to Russia.
The official added that these troops identify defects in the ammunition and monitor how the Russian army deploys, stores and uses the ammunition.
Intelligence authorities in South Korea and the United States estimate that since 2022, North Korea has provided Russia with at least ten-thousand shipping containers that could hold as many as five million artillery shells.