Sergei Lavrov praises Kim Jong-un for ‘unambiguous support’ for Ukraine war on visit that could pave way for summit with Vladimir Putin
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I think that this is probably the first time that North Korea has been a weapons supplier to Russia, so I suppose that he’s objectively correct.
“We highly value your principled, unambiguous support for Russia’s actions in connection with the special military operation in Ukraine,” he said, according to Russia’s RIA news agency.
Honestly, Lavrov, even Putin has slipped into calling it a war. I think that at the point that you’ve exhausted your artillery munitions, burned through all you could from Belarus, and are in the process of celebrating that, two years in, after leader-to-leader negotiations you were able to get some more from another country, it’s probably okay to call it a war.
Last week, the White House said arms shipments had already started, with North Korea delivering more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia in recent weeks.
I’d be interested in two numbers:
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An estimate of how many artillery rounds North Korea has in stockpiles. I assume that they will not draw them down to zero, but it’d give an idea of what the total impact will be.
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An estimate of North Korean artillery round production rate. One point that The War Zone raised was that North Korea does have artillery round production capacity. I know that North Korea has a fairly large artillery wing of their military, and I expect that they probably domestically-produce everything. If they add existing North Korean production capacity to existing Russian production capacity, that’ll help tilt the weight of artillery firepower towards Russia. If that is a factor, and the number is significant, then either that needs to be cut off one way or another or additional supply to Ukraine or some form of counter may need to be provided to Ukraine.
So far, the only statement I’ve seen relating to the quantitative impact of the Russian-North Korea deal was Mark Milley staying that he didn’t expect it to have a decisive impact in Ukraine, but that’s also pretty vague, and I don’t know what intelligence assessments or knowledge it incorporates.
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