Ukraine has batted away claims in the U.S. press that one of its rocket plants might have helped the North Korean regime to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered the country’s National Security and Defense Council on Aug. 16 to report within three days on the claims, made on Aug. 14 in an article published by the U.S. newspaper The New York Times.
The council on Aug. 22 reported the results of its investigation into the alleged exports of missile technology, including specific claims made in the article about the RD-250 rocket engine, from Ukrainian state-owned plant Pivdenmash to North Korea.
According to its report, the council concluded that Ukraine had not supplied any missile technology to North Korea, and claims to the contrary were disinformation from Russia.
Moreover, the country has not produced RD-250 rocket engines since 1991, and the last batch of them was exported to Russia before 2008, the council said in its report.
The NYT article, entitled “North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say,” based its sensational claims on a study by missile expert Michael Elleman published on Aug. 14 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank.
Elleman’s study, as well as unnamed sources in the U.S. intelligence, said that the rocket engines – identified as RD-250s – “likely” came to North Korea from Yuzhny machine-building plant (known as Pivdenmash in Ukrainian or Yuzhmash in Russian) in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government immediately ordered an investigation by the National Security and Defense Council and the Inter-agency commission on military-technical cooperation and export control to verify the claims of th New York Times’ sources.
The secretary of the council, Oleksandr Turchynov, reported the results of the investigation to President Petro Poroshenko on Aug. 22, the council said in a post on its website.
Turchynov said that “existing state export control system precludes any possibility of the transfer of military and dual-used goods to countries under sanctions introduced by the UN Security Council.”
North Korea is on the sanctions list.
Moreover, the analysis of images of North Korea’s Hwasong-12 and Hwasong-14 rockets revealed that they contain one-chamber engines, the while RD-250 is a two-chambered engine, the council said. However, it was not excluded that parts of RD-250 enines might have been used for the construction of the North Korean rocket motors.
The RD-250 rocket engine and variants of the motor have not been manufactured in Ukraine since 1991, the report by the council reads.
Ukraine discontinued the production of this type of engine in 1994, and the means of its production no longer exist, the council said in its report.
Thirty RD-250 rocket engines and 10 RD-262s (a modified version of the RD-250), manufactured in 1991, were exported to Russia between 1992 and 2008 for the construction of 10 Cyclone-3 launch vehicles. This is confirmed by Pivdenmash documents, the council said.
Currently, Pivdenmash has three Cyclone-2 launch vehicles, which consist of nine RD-250 engines and three RD-262 engines. All three were delivered to Ukraine from Russia in 2013.
Reports of the detention and conviction of North Korean spies for an attempt to steal missile technology papers from Ukraine in 2012 were not confirmed. Documentation with missile technology is kept in specially equipped premises, Ukrainian officials said.
Finally, RD-250 engine rocket fuel requires toxic substances – heptyl and amyl, which are not produced in Ukraine. Heptyl is manufactured in Russia, the United States, China, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Amyl is produced by Russia, the United States, China and Germany.
The inter-agency commission concluded that the Russian government is running a planned disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting Ukraine as a trustworthy partner committed to international obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and missile technology control regime, according to the council report.
“The working group considers The New York Times’ publication as an element of information smoke screen and an attempt to distract attention of the international community from alleged participation of Russia in the development of a ballistic missiles program in North Korea,” council secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said in his report to Poroshenko.
Poroshenko, commenting on the report, said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine to assemble a group experts and take the issue to the UN Security Council.
