In the KN-23/KN-24 ballistic missiles, which North Korea supplies to Russia for strikes against Ukraine, components produced by companies from five countries – China, the USA, Japan, Great Britain and Switzerland – were found. About this reported The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
According to intelligence information, the missiles contain Western parts, in particular, the voltage converter of the British manufacturer XP Power, which was manufactured already after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2023. A current sensor from the Swiss company LEM International SA, a tantalum capacitor from the American Semtech Corporation and other technologies of Western origin were also found among the components.
GUR notes that Russia, together with its allies, Iran and North Korea, uses complex schemes to circumvent international sanctions in order to obtain Western technologies for the production of weapons. According to intelligence, Russia has already received more than 100 KN-23/KN-24 missiles from North Korea. For the first time, these missiles were used in Ukraine at the end of 2023.
On January 2, 2024, a Russian KN-23/KN-24 missile hit a residential high-rise building in Kyiv, killing four people. Another tragic incident occurred on August 11, 2024 in the Kyiv region, when fragments of such a rocket took the lives of a four-year-old boy and his father.
