The White House National Security spokesman, John Kirby, claimed that North Korea supplied Russia with ballistic missiles that were used in attacks on Ukrainian targets.
Russia has started using ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea to attack Ukraine, Washington and Kyiv have claimed, in an indication that Moscow plans to further expand its arms deals with regimes under sanctions in order to sustain its war effort.
Washington also alleged Russia was in talks with Iran to buy short-range ballistic missiles. The US intelligence assessment is that Iranian missiles have not yet arrived in Russia, but that the deal will eventually be done.
The US reports were endorsed by several Ukrainian officials, including an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration, who said that Russian arms deals with Pyongyang and Tehran made the country part of a new “axis of evil of the [21st] century”.
So what is going on? A couple of possibilities exist. For instance, this could be part of a coordinated U.S. and Ukraine psy-op aka information warfare ploy to ratchet up pressure on the Republican House of Representatives to cough up $61 billion dollars to fund the losing cause in Ukraine. Or, this could be true.
If true, the United States and Ukraine are playing this up as a sign of Russian desperation and limited supplies of its own ballistic missiles. It is important to understand that a North Korean ballistic missile is not a sophisticated, maneuverable weapon system.
A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are powered only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within the Earth’s atmosphere, while intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are launched on a sub-orbital flight.
Notwithstanding the continued vain hope in Washington and Kiev that Russia is running out of cruise and hypersonic missiles, there is no credible evidence to substantiate that belief. So why would Russia want to use a North Korean missile and, as reported in the Guardian, Iranian short-range ballistic missiles?
Let me posit one possible explanation — North Korea and Iran want to test their weapon systems in combat conditions. Normally, North Korea and Iran test their ballistic missiles in non-hostile environments, i.e. a launch that is not facing an air defense system. Being able to launch some of these in a real world combat theater like Ukraine gives the weapons engineers in North Korea and Iran a chance to see if those ballistic missiles perform as expected when fired against combat targets in Ukraine.
If Russia fired some North Korean ballistic missiles into Ukraine over the last week then they learned, along with North Korea, that NATO supplied air defense systems failed to intercept and destroy those missiles.
So far, neither Washington nor Kiev has provided any evidence that such missiles were launched. Russia has ample supplies of Kinzhal and Iskander missiles, which are systems that are superior to anything fielded by North Korea or Iran. Russia’s 9M728/9M729 (SSC-X-7/SSC-X-8) cruise missiles used by Iskander-K is just one version of Iskander that vexes Western military planners. We will just wait and see if the West ponies up any legit evidence to substantiate their claim that North Korean missiles are raining down on Ukrainian positions.
(Article by Larry Johnson republished from TheGatewayPundit)