Ukraine reportedly struck a Russian depot in the border Bryansk region overnight housing ammunition made by North Korea, one of Moscow’s key allies.
Spravdi, a center dedicated to countering misinformation established by Ukraine’s government, said on Wednesday that “another large Russian ammunition depot is lighting up the sky in the region of Bryansk.”
Explosions at the facility started overnight and continued “into the dawn hours,” the center wrote in a post to social media. It didn’t explicitly point to Kyiv’s hand, but said that “dismantling every aspect of Russia’s war machine, it’s logistics, arms and oil industries is the only path to peace.”
The warehouse, located in the Bryansk town of Karachev, was 114 kilometers (71 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in a post to messaging app Telegram.
A Russian serviceman during combat training at an unknown location. Ukraine struck a Russian depot in the border Bryansk region overnight, according to reports.
Sergey Bobylev / Sputnik via AP
“Ammunition was stored in the warehouse, including from the DPRK, as well as anti-aircraft guns,” he added, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Russia’s emergency situations ministry said that it had registered “explosions of explosive objects” on Wednesday in the area around Karachev.
Footage widely shared online on Wednesday purportedly filmed close to the Bryansk town, which Newsweek couldn’t independently verify, appeared to show a series of explosions, possibly capturing the detonation of ammunition.
A Russian Telegram channel that claims to have links to Moscow’s security services shared a clip it said was filmed in Karachev, where local residents had seen “fire and explosions of ammunition.”
The Russian defense ministry has been contacted for comment via email.
Moscow said on Wednesday that it had intercepted 24 Ukrainian drones over the Bryansk region overnight out of a total 47 launched by Kyiv, but it didn’t elaborate.
Bryansk’s regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said there were “no casualties or damage,” but emergency crews were on the ground in unspecified locations.
Moscow—now a pariah for many Western countries following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022—has increasingly turned to allies like Iran, China and North Korea. North Korea has funneled weapons and munitions to Russia as the impact of its grinding war in Ukraine wears down the Kremlin’s stockpiles, even as Moscow’s defense industry pumps out new equipment heading straight for the front lines.
North Korea has sent thousands of containers of munitions for Russia’s war effort, U.S. and South Korean officials have said.
Munitions supplied by North Korea are “really bad for us, and so far there’s nothing we can do about that,” Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, said during an appearance in Kyiv in September.
Ukraine is able to see the North Korean supplies entering the country, he added, and Kyiv’s armed forces then feel the impact as soon as a few days later.
“The worst problem we are facing is the one coming from North Korea,” Budanov said.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russian ammunition storage sites, although it is not permitted to use long-range Western weapons for strikes into Russian territory.
Kyiv has targeted ammunition facilities in Russia’s Krasnodar and Tver regions in recent weeks. Ukraine said in September that the Tikhoretsk site in Krasnodar was “one of the three largest ammunition storage bases” for Russia, and hosted North Korean munitions.
North Korea is storming ahead with its missile development program, despite United Nations sanctions, and Ukraine has consistently reported Moscow firing Pyongyang’s missiles, including the KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles, in the war-torn country since late 2023.
In February, Kyiv’s SBU security service said Russia had fired more than 20 Hwasong-11 missiles, also known as the KN-23 and KN-24, into Ukraine since late December, killing at least two dozen civilians in that time.
There is a wealth of information and intelligence to be gained from Moscow’s deployment of North Korean missiles in Ukraine, Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Newsweek at the start of the year.
South Korea’s defense minister said on Tuesday that Pyongyang was likely to deploy its own troops to help Russia with its war effort in Ukraine, in what would be a major step up in North Korean involvement in the conflict.
“As Russia and North Korea have signed a mutual treaty akin to a military alliance, the possibility of such a deployment is highly likely,” Kim Yong-hyun said in remarks reported by South Korean media. Pyongyang and Moscow signed a mutual defense pact in June.
Ukrainian outlet The Kyiv Post reported earlier this month that a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian-held territory in the eastern Donetsk region had killed six North Korean personnel, citing anonymous Ukrainian intelligence sources. Kim described this report as likely true, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
