An International Institute for Strategic Studies missile expert, quoted by the New York Times as saying Ukraine could be the source of illegal shipments of new rocket engines for intercontinental ballistic missiles to North Korea, appeared to backtrack on Aug. 14.
“I don’t believe Ukr gov’t condoned or knew, if the engines were sourced in Ukr.,” Michael Elleman tweeted. “To the contrary, Ukr arrested North Koreans in 2012! Let me be clear about DPRK’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) source of ICBM engine: Yuzhnoye (in Dnipro, Ukraine) is one of several possible sources, there are other potentials in Russia.”
The tweets came after Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on Aug. 14 denied reports in the U.S. press that a Ukrainian missile plant was the likely source of rocket engines that have boosted North Korea’s missile program.
The New York Times, in an article entitled “North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say,” published earlier on Aug. 14, quoted Elleman and sources in U.S. intelligence agencies as saying that the rocket engines – identified as RD-250s – “probably” came from Ukraine’s Pivdenmash (often referred to by its name in Russian, Yuzhmash) missile plant.
However, in contrast to the newspaper’s headline, the article’s authors provide no evidence that Pivdenmash, a 73-year-old plant in the city of Dnipro, 500 kilometers south of Kyiv, illegally supplied the engines to the regime in North Korea, which is under international sanctions because of its nuclear weapons program.
Elleman, who was interviewed by the New York Times, wrote in a report about the advance of North Korea’s missile program that “Russia and/or Ukraine” could be the source of the engines. He said there was no evidence North Korea had the capability of developing such engines on its own, or that Pyongyang had been aided by foreign engineers.
The authors of the article, quoting Elleman, speculate that persons working at Pivdenmash might have been motivated to send the engines to North Korea because the plant has been in financial distress since Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution ousted Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. However, no evidence that this actually happened was given.
Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council’s Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov, responding to the claim, said Russia’s security services were trying to frame Ukraine and that the New York Times has spread “false information.” According to him, the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex has never supplied weapons and military technology to North Korea.
“Ukraine has never supplied rocket engines and any missile technology to North Korea,” Turchynov said on Aug. 14. “We believe that this anti-Ukrainian campaign was triggered by the Russian secret services to cover their participation in the North Korean nuclear and missile programs.”
He said Ukraine considers the regime in Pyongyang “totalitarian, dangerous and unpredictable,” and supports all sanctions against this country, as well as sanctions against Russia, “the regime of which is becoming increasingly similar to the North Korean one.”
Ukraine’s Pivdenmash said the story was built on “untrustworthy facts.”
“The assumptions of the authors of the publication, and of the ‘expert’ cited by them, regarding the possible connection of Ukraine with the progress of North Korea in the development of missile technologies, have nothing to do with reality,” Pivdenmash stated on Aug. 14 in a post on its website.
The company claims the only product the plant currently exports has no connection to any defense or military programs – RD-843 rocket engines, which it sells to Italy for that country’s space program.
Russia’s Energomash has yet to comment on the claims, according to a report by the UK newspaper The Telegraph.
No comment from Pivdenmash is included in the New York Times’ story. The main source in the story, missile expert Michael Elleman, worked in Russia for six years, heading the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for dismantling Russia’s obsolete long-range missiles.
In June 2012 and December 2015, Ukrainian and foreign media reported that North Korean spies had twice attempted to steal technology from Ukraine, in both cases from Pivdenmash.
In 2015, Ukraine reportedly detained and sentenced two North Korean diplomats from Belarus who had attempted to photograph secret documents from Pivdenmash relating to the construction of liquid fuel rocket engines.
