Missile debris from the 2 January attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv came from a North Korean ballistic missile, Reuters wrote Monday, citing a UN report.
The 32-page report by UN sanctions monitors confirmed the debris was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series missile, which violates sanctions imposed on North Korea for its ballistic missile programme by the UN Security Council in 2006.
The report could not independently verify where the missile came from or who had launched it but stated that “information on the trajectory provided by Ukrainian authorities indicates it was launched within the territory of the Russian Federation”.
Russian state-owned news agency TASS discredited the report, citing a UN source who said it wasn’t prepared by “core specialists”.
The US previously accused Russia of launching several North Korean missiles against Ukraine between December 30 and January 2.
Bloomberg reported in November that North Korean authorities had sent more than one million rounds of artillery to Russia. According to a South Korean official, 10 shipments from North Korea have been sent to Russia since August and North Korean experts were also sent to Russia to advise the country on how to use the ammunition.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously dismissed the reports of North Korean arms deliveries as “baseless” and “lacking specifics”.
