Posted on 02/28/2022 8:10:18 PM PST by Mariner
A Russian military convoy that was outside of Ivankiv, Ukraine, on Sunday has since made it to the outskirts of Kyiv, satellite images show.
On Sunday, the convoy was roughly 40 miles northwest of the Ukrainian capital, according to images provided by Maxar Technologies.
Maxar said that roughly 17 miles of roadway is chocked full of the convoy, which consists of armored vehicles, tanks, towed artillery and other logistical vehicles.
The private US company said the convoy was located on the T-1011 highway at Antonov air base around 11:11 a.m local time.
Antonov is roughly 17 miles from the center of the Ukrainian capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Russian President Vladimir Putin evoked a wide Russian social and economic mobilization reminiscent of the Soviet Union's total mobilization during the Second World War during a February 2 speech despite the fact that Russia is undertaking a far more gradual but nonetheless effective mobilization of its defense industrial base (DIB). Putin attended the “Everything for Victory” event at the Tulatochmash plant in Tula Oblast on February 2 and promoted Russian efforts to expand its DIB to an audience of 600 representatives of various professions from across Russia.[1] “Everything for Victory” is a Soviet-era slogan that Soviet authorities first used during the Russian Civil War and then extensively during the Second World War to promote the widespread mobilization of Soviet industry and society.[2] Putin stated that defense industrial workers in Tula Oblast are currently working under this slogan just as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did.[3] Putin asserted that modern Russian defense industrial workers have proven themselves worthy of these ”ancestors,” who won the industrial battle against Nazi Germany and Europe‘s defense industry to create the Soviet victory of 1945.[4] Putin followed his Soviet predecessors in ignoring the critical role the US defense industry played in facilitating the Soviet victory through the Lend-Lease program. The Kremlin has previously appealed to the mythos of the Great Patriotic War (Second World War) to reassure the Russian public that the Russin war effort will bring to bear overwhelming manpower and materiel for victory in Ukraine as the Soviet Union did for the Red Army against Nazi Germany.[5] Putin's allusion to the Soviet Union's total mobilization during the Second World War does not necessarily indicate that he intends to bring Russia to such a wartime footing, although he may be engaging in such rhetorical overtures to gauge domestic reactions and prepare the Russian public for a wider economic or military mobilization.
Putin claimed that Russia's DIB is significantly expanding and sufficiently supporting the war effort in Ukraine. Putin claimed that 6,000 Russian enterprises and 3.5 million workers are part of Russia's DIB and that 10,000 more enterprises are connected to the DIB in auxiliary or supporting roles.[6] Putin stated that in the previous 16 months, Russia's DIB has created 520,000 new jobs; has increased the production of armored protection for personnel by a factor of 2.5; and has increased the production of armored vehicles and other equipment for combined arms warfare by an unspecified percentage.[7] Putin claimed that Russian enterprises are fulfilling the entirety of the state defense order and that the Kremlin significantly increased and fully funded the 2024 state defense order.[8] Putin also repeatedly stressed that Russia is expanding its DIB with technological innovation and adaptation as a priority, alleging that all of Russia's latest weapons are superior to weapons produced by NATO countries.[9] Putin added that whoever is quicker to find new ways to suppress their enemy's means of destruction, reconnaissance, and suppression will win, echoing sentiments that Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi expressed in his February 1 essay detailing a strategy to seek advantage over the Russian military through technological innovation and adaptation.[10]
Russia has been gradually mobilizing its DIB in an effort to fulfill operational requirements in Ukraine without causing widespread disruptions to Russia's already beleaguered economy.[11] This effort, while well below total mobilization, has addressed many Russian requirements for sustaining Russian operations in Ukraine.[12] The Russian effort has achieved this effect in part through Russia's ability to procure equipment from its partners and retool Russia's economy for military production purposes.[13] Russia has yet to expand its DIB to the point where it will be able to stop relying on partner countries to source critical materiel, however. It remains unclear how much further Russia can mobilize its DIB without taking significant and possibly unpopular actions given Russia's persistent economic and human capital constraints. The longer Russia maintains the battlefield initiative in Ukraine, however, the more the Russian military will have the option to tailor operations to optimize Russia's production and consumption of certain materiel in a sustainable and scalable way. Retaining the battlefield initiative may also allow the Kremlin to choose to expand Russia's DIB over conducting a large-scale offensive effort that would require substantial materiel.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-2-2024
The Kremlin censored a protest by wives of mobilized soldiers in Moscow on February 3 likely to suppress any possible resurgence of a broader social movement in support of Russian soldiers and against the regime. Members of the Russian “Way Home” social movement laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow before holding a protest at the nearby Manezhnaya Square to commemorate the 500th day since Russian President Vladimir Putin began partial mobilization in September 2022.[8] Russian state media outlets largely did not cover the protest but did report that the Moscow Prosecutor's Office warned against attending an unspecified protest in Moscow on February 3, very likely referring to the Way Home protest.[9] Russian opposition media outlets covered the protest in detail, however, estimating that roughly 200 people attended, and reported that Moscow police detained 27 individuals, most of whom were Russian and foreign journalists.[10] The opposition outlets reported that authorities later released the detained individuals without charges and that some of the Way Home members protested outside of the police station for the release of all detained individuals.[11] Russian police allowed Way Home protestors to later go to Putin's campaign headquarters and handwrite appeals to Putin to bring mobilized personnel home, but the headquarters only allowed small groups of demonstrators inside and severely limited media access. Russian law enforcement likely deliberately detained journalists rather than protestors to limit reporting of the event while depriving the Way Home organization of a platform on which to martyr itself in the information space over the arrests of its members.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet leadership experienced first-hand the influence that social movements of relatives of Russian soldiers wielded, and the Kremlin likely aims to preemptively censor and discredit similar movements before they could garner similar influence. Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov criticized the Way Home protests on February 3, accusing the wives of lacking the authority to advocate on behalf of frontline Russian soldiers because they are wives of soldiers, not mothers of soldiers, and asked to hear from the “husbands” instead.[12] (One of the main concerns of relatives is that mobilized Russian soldiers consistently lack the ability to communicate with relatives back home and go missing).[13] Solovyov asked whether the “husbands” authorized their wives to advocate on their behalf and asked whether this movement was “another Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.”[14] The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers (later renamed the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers) was founded in 1989 and advocated for better treatment of Soviet conscripts who were enduring poor living standards and violence — most notably suffering from dedovshchina, the ritual hazing of conscripts using physical and sexual violence — during peacetime in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[15] The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers also called for greater transparency within the Soviet military, particularly regarding deaths in the Afghanistan and Chechen wars as well as in peacetime, whereas the Soviet government desired to censor both the deaths and mothers’ movement.[16] The mothers’ movement leveraged public displays of grief and other tactics to pressure Soviet officials into disclosing the number of peacetime military deaths, which exceeded the number of Soviet casualties in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[17] The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers was so effective that it forced the Soviet military to make sweeping changes in the 1990s, including removing and prosecuting corrupt military commanders and officials in the military prosecutor's office.[18] The legacy of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers represents the societal destabilization possible from a failed Soviet attempt at complete censorship, and Solovyov's evocation of this specific organization indicates the depth of the Kremlin's fear of similar movements only a few decades later.[19]
Putin may have learned from the Soviet Union's prior failure to completely censor soldiers’ relatives and changed tactics, instead using limited censorship and discreditation to keep these movements from building momentum. The Kremlin has censored other relatives’ movements in support of Russian mobilized personnel since September 2022 and has more recently targeted the Way Home movement in December 2023 and January 2024.[20] Russian authorities compelled the Council of Wives and Mothers, founded in September 2022, to stop operating after designating it as a foreign agent in May 2023 after likely threatening criminal prosecution against its founder in December 2022.[21] Russian opposition outlets reported in late January 2024 that Russian authorities attempted to hack the social media accounts of Way Home members and that Russian law enforcement harassed members at prior demonstrations, both likely to discourage members from continuing their activism.[22] Other Russian sources, including ultranationalist milbloggers, have spread claims that Ukrainian special agents run the Way Home movement or that its leadership is otherwise corrupt.[23] While the degree of social influence that the Way Home movement or other similar Russian movements may hold is unclear, the extent and complexity of the Kremlin's efforts to limit the rise of relatives’ movements in support of Russian soldiers underscores the Kremlin's desperation to shut down these movements, particularly ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections and as it prepares for a long-term war effort.
full report: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-3-2024
Russians are afraid of the demobilization. Important data from opinion polls are being hidden from Putin.
The story of the demobilization [from the war in Ukraine] is taking an unexpected turn. We have repeatedly written that the president wants to carry out partial demobilization before the elections and send home from 10 to 20 thousand military personnel who were mobilized to participate in hostilities. The generals are against it. They present their arguments, not always convincing, but they exist.
Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] wants to hear the voice of the people - that the people support him, and are also “for” demobilization. Attempts to publicly declare the need for demobilization have already been made by the wives and relatives of the mobilized, but without a large scale it is difficult to notice them. Therefore, in order to find out the real mood of Russians, they conducted a special opinion poll. We surveyed 2.5 thousand of our citizens. And the results, it must be admitted, exceeded all expectations.
Statistics showed that the majority of Russians (84%) support the demobilization of soldiers from the front. At the same time, very few (only 8%) agree that they or their loved ones take the vacant positions at the front. Further more. More than half of those surveyed (59%) admitted that they fear the return of military personnel from the front, and 65% of survey participants even expect a worsening of the crime situation in their cities and towns after demobilization. The operators, by the way, noted that some of the respondents by the end of the conversation were not so sure of the need for demobilization.
It is curious that the results of these polls are not yet shown to Vladimir Putin. Sergei Shoigu knows about them and really wants to get them at his disposal. The fact is that the results of these opinion polls give the military another argument against demobilization - the military should not be allowed to go home, so as not to provoke an increase in criminality in the rear. Of course, logic can be found in such arguments. But all this is somehow inhumane...
“Tanks may go to Moscow in March.” Shoigu is preparing a secret report to Putin.
We wrote that the Minister of Defense is preparing compromising evidence on Mikhail Teplinsky. Shoigu wants to accuse the general of trying to start a riot and send troops under his control to capture several regions and cities, including Moscow. It appears that this matter is nearing its climax.
According to two sources in the Ministry of Defense, “Sergei Kuzhugetovich [Shoigu] has almost prepared a secret report to Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin].” This report, according to our information, states that Teplinsky intends to raise at least 20-25 thousand military personnel to revolt against the authorities. According to Shoigu, one of the main attacks will be aimed at Moscow. “The traitor Teplinsky can make sure that tanks go to the capital in March. Perhaps he will want to seize power in Moscow before the elections, so that he can then spread his influence throughout Russia,” one of the interlocutors quoted the document to us. He declined to provide other details.
We asked people around Teplinsky how they were going to react to these accusations. “No way. Everyone understands that this is nonsense. But Shoigu will finish the game. And Vladimir Vladimirovich will not believe such nonsense, I'm sure,” said an officer close to Mikhail Yuryevich [Teplinsky].
The report has not yet been presented to Vladimir Putin. The President will be able to review it sometime at the end of next week.
https://t.me/kremlin_secrets/3549
The internal power struggle is increasing.
Update: Losharik and Belgorod
A fire killed the crew of the secret Russian nuclear submarine “Losharik”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3761049/posts?page=217#217
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to face the authoritarian's dilemma, whereby his authoritarian regime is itself systematically preventing him from receiving accurate information about military-political realities in Russia. A prominent Russian milblogger — who previously appeared on state media outlets and was temporarily detained in March 2022 — published a rant accusing the Russian bureaucracy and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) of deliberately withholding information from Putin, likely in response to recent Russian propagandists’ efforts to conceal Russian military failures near Novomykhailivka.[17] The milblogger claimed that Russia has a culture in which local authorities closely work with regional media outlets to censor and conceal from the Kremlin any negative reports. The milblogger argued that Putin created a consultative civil society institution called the Russian Civic Chamber in 2004 whose members would monitor local governments’ activities in order to provide negative, but accurate, information “to the top,” but the chamber failed to do so because the chamber's representatives decided to remain silent — just like the officials that they were elected to monitor. The milblogger observed that Putin then created the All-Russian People's Front in 2011 to target the same problem and that the initiative was successful until representatives began to follow in the Russian Civic Chamber's footsteps. The milblogger argued that the Russian MoD engages in similar, secretive efforts to those of regional officials to conceal its failures from Putin and resents voices that undermine these efforts. The milblogger stated that the Russian MoD made it nearly impossible for milbloggers and government officials to visit frontlines and claimed that there are rumors that the Russian military command deploys generals to Syria if they start to have frequent communication with Putin. The milblogger argued that the Kremlin can only see honest discussions about Russia's battlefield realities from the milblogger and volunteer accounts outlined in its media monitoring reports and noted that the lack of transparency is a systematic problem among Russian government structures. The milblogger later forecasted that bureaucrats will attempt to block Telegram and arrest milbloggers following the Russian presidential election in March 2024 in response to another milblogger’s observation that Russian Telegram channels remain the only source of constructive opposition in Russia.[18]
Putin's recent efforts to address milbloggers’ concerns over Russian drone shortages and failures to repel Ukrainian forces from east (left) bank Kherson Oblast indicate that he continues to see value in having milbloggers serve as a constructive opposition that checks Russian government and military officials.[19] Putin's past creations of the All-Russian People's Front and the Russian Civic Chamber, and his relatively lenient treatment of milbloggers throughout the full-scale invasion, indicate that he is unlikely to decisively censor the milblogger and volunteer communities because he likely values the ability to check on his government. Putin is unlikely to pursue a mass censorship campaign against milbloggers on his own unless select factions within the Kremlin successfully convince him that milbloggers pose an immediate threat to his regime's stability. Kremlin officials appear to have been successful in convincing Putin to eliminate and neutralize some milbloggers and information space actors such as former Russian officer Igor Girkin and media networks affiliated with Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Kremlin officials, however, have likely been unsuccessful in turning Putin against a vast community of milbloggers that criticizes the bureaucracy while avidly supporting Putin and his war effort in Ukraine.
The Russian defense industrial base (DIB) is unlikely able to fully support Russia's reserve manpower despite Russia's ability to sustain its current tempo of operations and ongoing efforts to expand the Russian DIB. Mashovets stated that the operational and strategic reserves are generally not combat-ready, yet the Russian command tends to view its reserve component as a “bottomless barrel.”[5] Mashovets stated that the Russian DIB is able to produce about 250-300 “new and thoroughly modernized” tanks per year. Mashovets stated that Russian forces can also overhaul about 250-300 tanks that have been in long-term storage or sustained battlefield damage per year. Mashovets stated that the situation is similar for armored combat vehicles, suggesting that the Russian DIB can more or less cover Russian forces’ annual vehicle losses. Mashovets stated that the Russian DIB, however, cannot produce enough materiel to equip large Russian reserves should the need suddenly arise. The Latvian Defense Ministry's State Secretary Janis Garisons stated on December 13 that Russia can “produce and repair” about 100-150 tanks per month.[6] Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev claimed in March 2023 that Russia's DIB could produce 1,500 main battle tanks in 2023, which suggests an average production of 125 tanks per month.[7] Even with these higher estimates the Russian DIB remains unlikely able to support a larger mobilization of manpower and would likely need to expand dramatically to support larger offensive operations that would require the use of more manpower reserves. ISW continues to assess that Russia would have the opportunity to expand its DIB and amass resources if it maintains the theater-wide initiative throughout 2024 although not likely to an extent sufficient to supply great masses of mobilized reservists or conscripts this year.[8]
full report with maps https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-4-2024
The Kremlin is intensifying rhetoric pushing for the hypothetical partition of Ukraine by seizing on innocuous and unrelated topics, likely in an attempt to normalize the partition narrative in Western discussions about Ukraine. Deputy Chairperson of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev claimed on February 5 that purported European plans to construct a railway line from Spain to Lviv City are evidence of the West's acknowledgement that Lviv City would be “the new capital of Ukraine within the borders of [Lviv Oblast],” presumably following the end of Russia's war in Ukraine.[9] The plan, notably, has nothing to do with Ukrainian borders or an end state to the war in Ukraine and is an independent European infrastructure project. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials have recently reignited the narrative framing the invasion of Ukraine as an historically justified imperial conquest and proposed to a largely Russian-speaking audience in December 2023 that Russia and European powers could partition Ukraine and leave it as “sovereign” rump state within the borders of Lviv Oblast, comments that subsequently gained some attention from a few right-wing nationalist Central European politicians.[10] Medvedev notably posted his February 5 claims on his English-language X (formerly Twitter) account and not on his Russian-language Telegram account, suggesting that his statement was intended for an international audience as opposed to a Russian domestic audience. Medvedev’s statement furthers the Russian information operation that erroneously portrays Ukraine as an artificially constructed state, likely in an effort to reduce Western military support for Ukraine and normalize Western discussions that push Ukraine to cede much of its territory and people to Russia as a legitimate way to end the war. ISW continues to assess that Russian President Vladimir Putin maintains his maximalist objectives in Ukraine, which are tantamount to complete Ukrainian and Western capitulation.[11]
Russian ultranationalists continue to support the Kremlin's maximalist objectives in Ukraine and reject the notion that negotiations would lead to a lasting end to the war. Deputy Head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Main Directorate of Rosgvardia, Commander of its special rapid response and riot police (OMON and SOBR), and prominent Russian milblogger Alexander Khodakovsky claimed that a “truce” would not result in peace and that “achieving lasting peace is only possible through war and the victory” of either Russia or Ukraine.[12] Khodakovsky also claimed that the current period of positional warfare hinders Russian forces from exhausting Ukrainian forces along the entire frontline and argued that Russian forces need to pressure Ukrainian forces and compel Ukraine to commit more resources to battle along the entire frontline. Khodakovsky's zero-sum framing of the war is indicative of the wider Russian ultranationalist support for the Kremlin's maximalist objectives of a complete Ukrainian and Western defeat. This zero-sum framing is also incompatible with any serious negotiations for an armistice or lasting peace.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-5-2024
We offer our condolences to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Iranian Embassy in Moscow on the sudden death of our great friend, Hossein Jahangiri. A wonderful person and a top-class translator has passed away. We mourn with the family and friends of dear Hossein. Bright memory.
https://twitter.com/RusEmbIran/status/1754397693395243015
(Note that they are writing in English on their Twitter account. This is a big mistake by the Russians. But they have a message in Persian here https://t.me/russianembassytehran/2184)
The embassy employee visited a fitness club in a shopping center on Pyatnitskoye Highway, not far from his place of residence. There at about 18.00 he felt unwell and lost consciousness. The arriving doctors were unable to save him https://www.mk.ru/incident/2024/02/05/pomoshhnik-posla-irana-vnezapno-umer-v-moskovskom-fitnesklube.html
He "accidentally" died after today's leak of 220 pages of technical details of Shahed drones and contracts for their production in Russia.
https://twitter.com/Monitor807/status/1754962293773738360
Russian blogger:
An assistant to the Iranian ambassador suddenly died in Moscow. Tehran suspects something is wrong.
Important, although not very noticeable, news yesterday was the unexpected death of Iranian diplomat Hossein Jahangiri. He was not just an embassy employee, but the best simultaneous translator from Russian to Farsi and vice versa. Jahangiri was directly involved in all key negotiations involving the Iranian side.
His death occurred suddenly - he allegedly died of a heart attack in one of the fitness clubs in Moscow. At the time of his death, the diplomat was only 56 years old; a few years ago, his Russian wife died of cancer.
Interlocutors in diplomatic circles told us that Tehran has requested blood samples from the Russian side of the deceased ambassador's assistant. There is reason to believe that Jahangiri may not have died a natural death, or at least he was helped.
Sources close to the negotiation process between Iran and Russia say that Jahangiri really knew a lot. “He participated not only in negotiations with us, but also with Hezbollah, Hamas, Afghanistan,” shares the interlocutor at the Foreign Ministry.
Our interlocutors agree that the death of the translator will not affect the negotiation process between Russia and Iran, but it can certainly undermine trust. Tehran hopes that the investigation into the diplomat's death will be comprehensive and open. Iran is also wary of rumors about an impending deal between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. According to information, Putin promised Trump to “surrender” Iran in exchange for Ukraine. In this regard, Iran is already planning to reduce the volume of military-technical cooperation with Russia.
The total price of the production contract, including the transfer of technologies,
equipment, 6000 sets of UAVs, software, is 108.5 billion rubles ($1.75 billion).
According to the papers, by 2022, Russia intended to release 6000 Iranian drones under license at its facilities. The Iranian side announced a starting price of 23 million rubles per unit ($375,000).
However, during the negotiations, an agreement was reached at the level of 12 million rubles per board when ordering 6,000 units ($193,000) or 18 million rubles ($290,000 when ordering 2,000 units.
https://twitter.com/CrescentOfAnon/status/1754544798118113511
Here is the leak https://simorgh.io
https://twitter.com/ukrdefence/status/1754851627201167643
Payments in gold.
Russian authorities are reportedly paying Iran roughly $4.5 billion per year to import Iranian Shahed drones to use in Ukraine. A group of hackers from a hacking organization called the Prana Network claimed to have hacked into the servers of purported Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) front company Sahara Thunder on February 4 and published the costs per drone that Russia purchases from Iran.[13] The leaked documents suggest that Russia pays $193,000 per Shahed-136 drone in batches of 6,000 drones, which would total about $1.1 billion for all 6,000 Shahed-136 drones.[14] Russia reportedly pays $1.4 million per unit for one type of Shahed-238 drone and plans to purchase 677 of these upgraded Shahed drones per year, which would total about $947 million.[15] Another type of Shahed-238 reportedly cost about $900,000 per drone, and Russia reportedly plans to purchase 2,310 per year for just under $2.1 billion.[16] The documents claimed that the reconnaissance and attack Shahed-107 drones cost $460,000 each and that Russia plans to purchase 2,310, which would total about $1.5 billion.[17] A Russian milblogger justified the high cost due to the risk that Iran assumes by selling these drones to Russia and noted that the documents indicate that Russia plans to further localize production of Shaheds in Russia, which will reduce acquisition costs over time.[18] ISW is unable to confirm the authenticity of the purported leaked documents, but a milblogger’s claim that the documents refer to Iran as a ”friendly country” and refer to the Shahed drones in code as ”boats” is consistent with previously observed language about Iran and Iranian drone production in Russia.[19] Russian forces routinely use Shahed drones, which serve as both loitering munitions and as decoys to distract Ukrainian air defenses, and the massive expenditure on such systems is noteworthy.
Russia is reportedly unfreezing North Korean assets and helping North Korea evade international sanctions in exchange for missiles and artillery ammunition for Russia to use in Ukraine. The New York Times (NYT) reported on February 6 that unnamed “US-allied” intelligence officials told the NYT that Russia unfroze $9 million of $30 million worth of North Korean assets in an unspecified Russian financial institution, which the intelligence officials assess North Korea will use to buy crude oil.[20] The intelligence official stated that a North Korean front company recently opened a new account at a Russian bank in Russian-occupied South Ossetia that North Korea may use to evade UN sanctions. An unnamed senior US government official told the NYT that Russia is likely unfreezing North Korean assets and helping North Korea evade international sanctions in exchange for North Korean weapons transfers to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Russia in September 2023 and met with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in January 2024.[21] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated that North Korea delivered one million rounds of artillery ammunition to Russia from September to November 2023, and US officials have stated that Russian forces have launched at least nine North Korean ballistic missiles against Ukraine.[22] ISW continues to assess that Russia may be open to financial, technological, and defense cooperation with North Korea in return for the provision of artillery ammunition and ballistic missiles to use in Ukraine.[23] North Korea would also benefit from this cooperation by collecting technical data from its weapons’ performance in Ukraine to use in North Korean research and development among other things.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
