At first, it looked like very bad news for Ukraine.
The New York Times, one of the most reputable newspapers in the United States, on Aug. 14 published an article with the attention-grabbing headline “North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say.”
The claim that Ukraine had aided North Korea in developing its nuclear weapons delivery system, if true, would be a massive blow to Ukraine’s international image, given that North Korea, a belligerent Far Eastern hereditary dictatorship, has threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
It might also put strain on the relationship between Ukraine and the United States, its strongest ally.
The NYT article was based on a study by missile expert Michael Elleman published on the same day by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank. The journalists quoted Elleman and cited unnamed sources in the U.S. intelligence community as saying that the rocket engines – identified as RD-250s – “likely” came to North Korea from Ukraine’s Pivdenmash (often referred to by its name in Russian, Yuzhmash) missile plant.
But soon after the publication of the article, Ukraine’s authorities, commentators and journalists quickly began to cry foul.
That was because Elleman’s study did not support the main thesis of the NYT article – that the rocket engines had probably come from Pivdenmash. In fact, Elleman’s study implied that it was equally possible that the engines had come from a Russian plant, Energomash.
Besides, while accusing Ukraine of leaking the technology to North Korea, the authors of the article neither reached out to the Ukrainian authorities nor Pivdenmash for comment.
Ukraine’s answer
Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council’s Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov, responding to the claim, said that the whole story was a deliberate attempt by Russia’s security services to frame Ukraine, and that the New York Times had 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 or 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, issuing a statement the same day, said the story was built on untrustworthy facts. “The assumptions… have nothing to do with reality,” it read.
Pivdenmash CEO Sergii Voyt also went public – just not deliberately.
Russian pranksters Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetsov and Alexei “Lexus” Stolyarov called Voyt, pretending to be Turchynov. The two posted a recording of the call on YouTube on Aug. 16. In it, Voyt appeared to have had no doubt he was speaking to Turchynov, answering all of the questions about the issue the prankster Kuznetsov asked.
But during the prank call, Voyt said nothing that contradicted Ukraine’s official position – Pivdenmash had nothing to do with the North Korean missile program. He speculated that either Russia or China may have provided rocket engine secrets to North Korea.
“I can’t imagine how (the secrets) could’ve got (to North Korea). It might happen through our neighbor (Russia),” Voyt said, adding that Russia had access to Pivdenmash developments in times of the Soviet Union. But it might be China as well, as the plant’s design bureau has been working with the country for 20 years, helping it develop rocket engines, he said.
Anyway, Voyt said, “our design bureau could not give (any secrets) away.”
Expert backtracks
After the story, Ukraine issued its official denial, IISS missile expert Elleman, quoted by the New York Times, appeared to backtrack.
“I don’t believe the Ukrainian government condoned or knew if the engines were sourced in Ukraine,” Elleman tweeted on Aug. 14 late in the evening. “To the contrary, Ukraine arrested North Koreans in 2012!” he wrote, referring to a case when North Korean spies attempted to steal technology from Ukraine in 2012.
There was a second reported attempt by North Korean spies to steal missile technology secrets in 2015, also from Pivdenmash. Ukraine reportedly detained the spies when they attempted to photograph secret documents from the plant, and they were tried and imprisoned.
Elleman pointed out that it was equally possible that the engines had come to North Korea from Russia – something that the NYT story had not made clear.
“Let me be clear about DPRK’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) source of ICBM engine: (Pivdenmash) is one of the several possible sources, there are other potentials in Russia.”
Russian links?
However, the NYT story still earned Elleman bitter criticism from commentators and journalists in Ukraine, with Elleman himself being accused of being biased.
Some pointed to Elleman’s supposed links to Russia – he had worked in Russia for six years from 1996 to 2001, heading the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for dismantling Russia’s obsolete long-range missiles. His Facebook page contained pictures of his Russian family.
As criticism of him raged on social media, Elleman deleted his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Story fallout
The reaction to the story was shrugged off by the New York Times: Later on Aug. 14 it updated the story online to include Turchynov’s official denial, while keeping the same headline and angle of the story.
However, the Reuters news agency also jumped on the story, publishing a story on Aug. 16 quoting U.S. intelligence officials as saying they believe North Korea can produce its own missile engines and does not need to import technology from Ukraine.
The cited U.S. official said that the U.S. has “intelligence to suggest that North Korea is not reliant on imports of engines… Instead, we judge they have the ability to produce the engines themselves.”
When asked about the matter on Aug. 15, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that Ukraine has a “very strong nonproliferation record.”
The U.S. intelligence assessment quoted in Reuters, was also supported by an earlier, Aug. 10 post on the website of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. In the post, it was suggested North Korea certainly used indigenous missile technology development.
“Reliance on external sources for technology is clear,” said RAND expert Daniel M. Gerstein. However, he did not single out a particular country or mention Ukraine. According to Gerstein, North Korea’s current interest in developing missile technology “has far exceeded that of the previous two regimes” and could come from various sources.
“Several of the designs incorporated in the North Korean program came from old Soviet systems. In other cases, North Korea procured entire rocket systems, for example from Egypt in the 1970s,” Gerstein wrote.
He underlined that experts must examine the ties between Pyongyang, China and Russia, but that nothing was certain, leaving the source of North Korea’s new ICBM rocket engines a mystery.
