North Korea supplying long-range rockets and artillery to Russia: Report

North Korea has supplied long-range artillery systems to Russia’s Kursk Oblast, where Moscow reportedly plans an offensive involving North Korean troops against Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian intelligence sources told the Financial Times.

The report, shared with the FT, details the delivery of 50 “Koksan” self-propelled howitzers and 20 updated multiple-launch rocket systems.

These weapons have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, potentially for an operation involving North Korean soldiers to drive out Ukrainian forces.

Experts warn that the situation will further fuel the war amid reports of Donald Trump’s election win bring the prospect of talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine closer.

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Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the FT that the development followed a pattern of deepening North Korean involvement, “from sending large volumes of ammunition, weapons, and becoming a direct party to this war, which could help Russian forces retake the Kursk region”.

North Korea has already played a critical role in providing millions of rounds of artillery ammunition for the Russian military in 2023, he noted. It has deepened its involvement this year by sending more than 12,000 troops, according to multiple Western intelligence assessments, further internationalising the conflict.

A senior Ukrainian official said the next four to five months would be pivotal, signalling how Trump’s return to the White House is focusing minds in Kyiv on a possible end game in the war. Trump, who will be sworn in as U.S. president on Jan. 20, has said he will end the war quickly but has not said how.

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“This winter is a critical point … I hope the war is drawing to an end. Right now we will define the positions for both sides on negotiations, the starting positions,” the official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.

Officials are waiting to see who Trump picks for his top security and defence jobs for clues on how he will shape Ukraine policy. He has ruled out ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, seen in Kyiv as pro-Ukrainian.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Kyiv must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, commenting at a decisive moment after Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win and Russia’s grinding battlefield gains.

However, Zelenskiy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal, and argued it was convenient for Moscow to sit down to talk while continuing to fight.

Moscow’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said on Thursday that Russia would be open to negotiations on an end to the war if they were initiated by Trump, although he added that these would have to acknowledge “realities on the ground”.

Moscow uses this phrase to mean Ukraine would have to cede four regions that Russian forces have partly occupied and that Russia has claimed in their entirety.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly said since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.

However, a return to Ukraine’s internationally recognised 1991 borders was not mentioned in the president’s “victory plan” that he publicly presented last month.

Russia is advancing at its fastest rate since 2022 despite taking heavy losses, and Ukraine said last week it had clashed with some of an estimated 11,000 North Korean troops deployed to Russia’s Kursk region.

Stretched by manpower shortages, Ukrainian forces have lost some of the ground they captured in an August incursion into Kursk that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said could serve as a bargaining chip.

With inputs from agencies.