Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said that the information about the alleged sale of missile engines by the Pivdenmash (Yuzhmash) state enterprise to North Korea is a provocation.
“The information on Pivdenmash is clearly a provocation against Ukraine. I fully rely on the statement of the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and Pivdenmash itself that there was no such thing,” the prime minister said at a briefing in Dnipro on Aug. 15.
According to him, such sales could have never happened.
On August 14, The New York Times claimed in its article “North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say” that powerful rocket engines for North Korean missiles had been purchased on the black market, most likely from a Ukrainian plant “with historical ties to Russia’s missile program.”
The NSDC Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said that the Ukrainian defense and aerospace complexes hadn’t supplied weapons and military technology to North Korea, and false information disseminated by some foreign media about the alleged transfer of missile technology by Pivdenmash to the DPRK is most likely triggered by Russian special services
Pivdenmash dismissed the allegations aired by The New York Times and described them as an attempt to discredit the plant and Ukraine.
