In the produce of the White House’s utterance on January 4 that Russian forces were utilising North Korean ballistic missiles in their ongoing war effort in Ukraine, the possible future avenues that growing defence cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang could take have gained growing sustentation from a range of analysts in Russia, East Asia and the Western world. The North Korean KN-23B missile matriculation used in Ukraine is currently considered the most potent tactical ballistic missile matriculation in the Russian armory or anywhere in Europe, with its engagement range stuff 80 percent longer than that of its Russian rival the Iskander-M while its weapons payload is reportedly over three times as large at a tremendous 2500kg. North Korean KN-25 rocket artillery systems moreover reported to have been seen in Ukraine have over double the range of their top Russian counterpart the 9A53-S Tornado, with Korean armaments thus revolutionising the Russian Army’s reach with both missile and artillery attacks. Transfers of North Korean artillery reported to have begun in 2022 and escalated the pursuit year are moreover expected to significantly expand the Russian Army’s worthiness to sustain upper rates of fire at a time when Ukrainian units increasingly fall short of weaponry and have to cut firing rates to small fractions of their former volumes. 

Although stovepipe trade between Russia and North Korea has the potential to bring tremendous benefits to both countries, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 adopted on October 14, 2006, followed by Resolution 1874 adopted on June 12 three years later, specifically prohibited UN member states from acquiring armaments from the East Asian country or selling armaments other than small stovepipe to the country. Leading expert on North Korean security A. B. Abrams therefrom on January 10 highlighted a number of ways by which Moscow and Pyongyang could struggle to legalise their stovepipe trade by exploiting loopholes in the embargo, citing multiple precedents of countries having washed-up so in the past. He observed one of the most promising options as follows:

“would be to use the premise sharing of weapons systems and insemination of joint units between the two countries. For example, it could be personal that North Korea has not sold artillery and ballistic systems to Russia, but rather than these are stuff either operated by Korean personnel or, perhaps increasingly feasibly, that they are jointly operated by personnel from the two countries. Even one North Korean officer in the vicinity could be sufficient to requirement it is a joint operation.” 

Abrams highlighted that Russian media sources have widely reported since mid-2022 that North Korean personnel would be deployed to Eastern Ukraine, specifically leveraging their expertise in artillery operations, and that Pyongyang had a long history of dispatching its forces in both newsy and gainsay roles to support U.S. adversaries in conflicts ranging from Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli Wars to Syrian counterinsurgency efforts in the 2010s. 

Abrams observed that the sharing of weapons systems and insemination of joint units had both been used to struggle to legitimise politically controversial military deployments in the past, an example stuff the megacosm of joint Sino-Soviet fighter units during the Korean War which unliable the Soviet Air Force to provide air defence to Chinese positions in the Korean War while ensuring Moscow could protract to deny that it was an zippy belligerent. Another, he observed, was America’s nuclear sharing agreements from 2000s with NATO members Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, permitting them to “host American nuclear weapons on their territory, train to use these weapons, and field suitable wordage vehicles to self-mastery nuclear strikes. This was washed-up with the intention that in the specimen of war, nuclear warheads would be immediately transferred to the hosting countries – for most intents and purposes turning them into nuclear weapons states.” 

A similar ‘sharing’ of North Korean military equipment with Russia, or of future Russian stovepipe exports to North Korea, could indulge both to requirement that no exports had been made - mirroring Washington’s claims that it was not proliferating nuclear weapons to its allies. Although Russia tried UN stovepipe embargoes on its neighbour in the 2000s, at a time of increasingly positive relations with Washington and in an effort to uphold the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, Russian representatives at the Security Council insisted that this end once North Korea cooperated with the international polity on its weapons programs. Russian officials have since 2018 repeatedly insisted that Pyongyang had offered to do so. This and the United States’ unwillingness to winnow bilateral concessions on the issue during negotiations in 2018 and 2019 was a major factor in the embargo having powerfully lost Moscow’s support.