Russia provides North Korea with air defence systems in exchange for troops

Russia has provided North Korea with surface-to-air missiles and air defence systems in exchange for Pyongyang sending its troops to fight in the Ukraine war, Yonhap news agency quoted South Korea’s top security adviser as saying on Friday.

Russia is believed to have supplied equipment and missiles “to strengthen Pyongyang’s vulnerable air defence system”, South Korea’s National Security Adviser Shin Won Sik said.

Moscow also reportedly plans to supply “satellite-related technologies” to North Korea, Shin said.

Some 10,900 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, where a Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory is ongoing, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun, who said Pyongyang had also shipped additional arms to Russia, including self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launchers.

Ukraine struck a Russian army command post in the Kursk region with North Korean generals present with UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, adding that a senior North Korean general was wounded in the attack.

The UK approved the use of Storm Shadow missiles after Russia deployed North Korean troops in its war against Ukraine, which the British government saw as an escalation, an anonymous Western official told Bloomberg on Wednesday.