UN Experts: Kremlin Attacked Kharkiv Civilians With North Korean Missiles Mid-Winter

Debris from a missile that Moscow used to strike Ukrainian civilian targets in Kharkiv on Jan. 2, 2024 was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile, sanctions monitoring officials told a committee of the UN Security Council in their report, which is available to Reuters.

In a 32-page report obtained by Reuters on Monday, UN sanctions monitors concluded that “debris recovered from a missile that [struck] Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 2 January 2024 [is] from a DPRK Hwasong-11 series missile.” Thus, the observers confirmed that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, known colloquially as North Korea) violated the UN embargo on the supply of weapons to Russia.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions based on its development of ballistic missiles and its nuclear program since 2006, and these restrictions have gradually increased over the years.

Three UN sanctions observers arrived in Ukraine early this month to view wreckage, and found no evidence that the missile was made in Russia.

“Information on the trajectory provided by Ukrainian authorities indicates it was launched within the territory of the Russian Federation,” said the written report to the Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee on April 25.

Observers also point out that the use of a North Korean missile by Russian forces indicates that the purchase of these missiles was carried out by citizens of the Russian Federation, which is a violation of the supply embargo weapons of the DPRK, which was introduced in 2006.

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With Russia’s full-scale invasion approaching the 1,000-day mark, 3.7 million people have already been displaced inside Ukraine and around 6.7 million have fled as refugees, according to UN figures.

Reuters also writes that delegates of Russia and the DPRK at the UN in New York have not yet commented on the results of the sanctions monitors report.

The US and other countries previously accused North Korea of transferring weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine. Both Moscow and Pyongyang rejected these charges.

At a UN Security Council meeting in February, the US accused Russia of launching DPRK-supplied ballistic missiles against Ukraine on at least nine occasions.

In addition to violating UN sanctions against Moscow and Pyongyang, the alleged use of the weapons to target civilian residents and infrastructure are violations of international laws of armed conflict and constitute war crimes.

UN monitors said the Hwasong-11 series ballistic missiles were first publicly tested by the DPRK in 2019.