The National Security Council’s John Kirby said at Thursday’s White House press briefing that Russia launched North Korea-supplied missiles into Ukraine on December 30 and January 2, according to U.S. intel:
“As Russia continues to launch these brutal attacks, the United States has new information to share about the support that Russia is receiving from third countries. Due in part to our sanctions and export controls, Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage, and they've been forced to look to like-minded states for military equipment. As we've been warning publicly, one of those states is North Korea. Our information indicates that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea recently provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several ballistic missiles. On the 30th of December, 2023, Russian forces launched at least one of these North Korean ballistic missiles into Ukraine. This missile appears to have landed in an open field in the Zaporizhzhia region. And on January 2nd, Russia launched multiple North Korean ballistic missiles into Ukraine, including as part of its overnight aerial attack. We're still assessing the impacts of these additional missiles. We're releasing a graphic here, which you can see behind me, that documents the launch of these missiles from Russia into Ukraine. And as you can see, the graphic shows the area from which Russia launched the North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles on those two dates, as well as the impact location inside Ukraine of the missile that was launched on the 30th of December. And as I said, we're still assessing the impacts of the other additional missiles that were launched on the 2nd. We expect Russia and North Korea to learn from these launches, and we anticipate that Russia will use additional North Korean missiles to target Ukraine's civilian infrastructure and to kill innocent Ukrainian civilians. These North Korean ballistic missiles are capable of ranges of approximately 900 kilometers – that's about 550 miles. This is a significant and concerning escalation in the DPRK's support for Russia.”
