North Korea gives Russia junk: most of the shells it gave were made 50 years ago

North Korea has handed over 1.5 million shells to the Russian occupiers for the war with Ukraine, but most of them are unusable and need to be tested for combat capability.

Source. This was reported by The Times.

British journalists talked to Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, who said that the DPRK supplies the aggressor with shells that were manufactured more than 50 years ago.

"According to the available statistics, Russia has already imported 1.5 million rounds of ammunition from the DPRK, but these shells were manufactured in the 70s and 80s. Half of them do not work, and the rest need to be either repaired or tested before use," he explained.

According to Skibitsky, North Korea is simply giving the Russians old and unnecessary items. At the same time, Pyongyang is increasing domestic production and asking Moscow for certain technologies for exchange, such as missile and submarine technology, to develop its own defence industry.

"This proves once again that Russia lacks its own production capacity to rapidly and powerfully increase missile production. If it did not, why would it ask North Korea to do so?" – Skibitsky said.

South Korean border guards report that, given the number of containers the DPRK sent to Russia, it may be as many as three million artillery shells rather than one and a half million.

The fact that North Korea is supplying Russia with weapons was previously stated by the speaker of the US National Security Council, John Kirby. According to him, Pyongyang has shipped 1,000 containers of military equipment and ammunition to Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Background. As a reminder, the Russian military also complains about the poor quality of North Korean shells. They often fail to reach their targets because the powder charge in the shells often does not correspond to the declared one.