The Pentagon’s confirmation on April 24 that the U.S. secretly sent to Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which can reach deep into Russian-occupied areas, sparked angry responses in Russia and North Korea.
President Joe Biden approved the transfer in March as part of $300 million in aid to Ukraine, with Congress stalled on passing the roughly $60-billion-plus security package, ratified later in April.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Biden’s decision to provide those missiles came “on the back of Russia receiving and using [North Korean] long-range ballistic missiles and renewing and escalating its attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine.”
Washington warned Moscow last year that if Russia used long-range ballistic missiles in Ukraine, the U.S. would provide Kyiv with the same capability, The Associated Press reported, citing anonymous U.S. official.
Russia and North Korea denied the arrangement, but a growing body of evidence confirms that North Korea has provided Russia with long-range missiles and that Moscow used them to attack Ukraine, killing and wounding dozens of civilians.
Yet responding to the U.S. supply of long-range missiles to Ukraine, Russia and North Korea accused Washington of “aggression.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to expand “the sanitary zone” — the term Moscow uses for Ukrainian territory that is not under Russian occupation and a “legitimate military target” for Russian attacks. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov amplified the threat, promising Ukraine “more victims” and “more destruction.”
In a statement, the North Korean Ministry of National Defense implied direct U.S. participation in the war, calling the government in Kyiv “the Zelenskiy puppet clique,” and promised victory to “the heroic Russian army and people.”
“The U.S. administration, which had kept itself aloof from the delivery of long-range missiles, saying that it did not encourage Ukraine's strike on the Russian mainland, has betrayed more clearly its true colors as a harasser of peace aggravating war by providing Ukraine with such missiles. This time it has adopted such a mean policy as offering even long-range missiles for attacking the Russian territory to their lackeys,” the ministry said in a statement on April 28.
That is false.
Washington has made clear that Kyiv cannot use the missiles to strike within Russian territory.
After “a vigorous review process,” one White House official told The New York Times, the Biden administration had formulated a “clear use case” for providing Ukraine ATACMS. That includes striking Russian air bases, supply lines, and other military targets on occupied Ukrainian territory that Ukrainian forces previously could not reach.
North Korea does not appear to have applied similar restraints on Russia’s use of its ballistic missiles.
Following Pyongyang’s statement, an expose from Reuters on April 29 bolstered earlier reports Russia had used a North Korean ballistic missile to strike a civilian target in Ukraine.
Reuters cited the United Nations sanctions monitors' April 25 report to the Security Council's sanctions committee, which concluded that "debris recovered from a missile that landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on January 2, 2024, derived from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series missile.”
The U.N. investigators also said the missile’s trajectory “indicates it was launched within the territory of the Russian Federation” and that "such a location, if the missile was under control of Russian forces, would probably indicate procurement by nationals of the Russian Federation."
That procurement would violate the arms embargo the United Nations Security Council placed on North Korea in response to its first nuclear test in 2006, Reuters reported.
Hwansong-11 is North Korea’s “first missile to have military significance when armed with a conventional warhead,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, a global think-tank, said in a special report documenting Pyongyang’s military capabilities.
North Korea developed this solid-propellant long-range missile, capable of reaching up to 140 kilometers (87 miles), based on a Soviet-designed Tochka missile obtained from Syria in the early 2000s. Since its deployment in 2013, Hwansong-11 has no known failures, the IISS said.
Footage published by Reuters along with an image published by The Kyiv Independent showed that the North Korean missile debris was recovered from the site of a Russian attack on civilian infrastructure.
The U.N. report corroborates research from the U.K.-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research, which first reported on Russia’s use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine in January, documenting “remnants of a North Korean ballistic missile recovered in Kharkiv on 2 January 2024.”
The Kharkiv-based Gwara Media reported Russia had damaged 134 residential buildings in Kharkiv in strikes conducted on December 29, 30 and 31 and January 2.
In February, Ukrainian authorities said that Russia had launched 24 North Korean missiles over a multiweek span. Only two missiles reportedly struck military targets; others killed at least 14 Ukrainian civilians. That included the January 2 attack on Kharkiv’s city center, which killed three people and injured 64 others.
The U.S. accused North Korea of providing Russia with weapons in October 2023.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby condemned the move, saying Russia would use the weapons “to attack Ukrainian cities, kill Ukrainian civilians and further Russia's illegitimate war.”
“We will not allow the DPRK [North Korea] to aid Russia's war machine in secret,” Kirby said.
In January, the U.S. further accused North Korea of providing Russia with ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Russia’s U.N. representative claimed the U.S. was “spreading false information” over North Korea missile delivery allegations.
In a joint statement in January, the European Union and 48 countries condemned Pyongyang’s export of ballistic missiles to Moscow and “Russia’s use of these missiles against Ukraine on December 30, 2023, and January 2, 2024.”
“The transfer of these weapons increases the suffering of the Ukrainian people, supports Russia’s war of aggression, and undermines the global non-proliferation regime,” the statement read.
In February, South Korea said Pyongyang had provided Russia with possibly more than 3 million artillery shells.
The U.S. had previously given Ukraine a version of the ATACMS with a shorter range, which Kyiv first used in October 2023.
U.S. officials told Reuters Ukraine had used long-range missiles against a military airfield in Russia-occupied Crimea on April 17.