Rare Russian VIP jet in North Korea stokes concern over arms deals

NORTH KOREA - An unusual sighting of a Russian military jet in North Korea is stoking concern that the country’s leader Kim Jong Un is selling President Vladimir Putin weapons as

ties strengthen between the sanctioned states.

Tracking data from FlightRadar24 shows the Russian Air Force Ilyushin IL-62M flying direct from Moscow to Pyongyang on July 31 and returning on Aug 2.

Satellite imagery showed the aircraft at Pyongyang’s international airport for about 36 hours, according to NK News, a Seoul-based provider of news on North Korea that also tracks flight activity in the isolated country.

The flight was the first by this type of Russian military VIP plane to North Korea since mid-2019, when Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin travelled to Pyongyang, NK News said.

Pyongyang closed its borders in early 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, choking its economy.

Neither Russia nor North Korea has reported on the plane and it is unclear who was on board. Russia’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The journey by the Russian Air Force jet came just days after Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu flew to Pyongyang on a similar jet to attend a military parade hosted by Mr Kim, who gave him a tour of a weapons exhibit.

It “appears related to following up on Shoigu’s delegation visit and possibly agreements made with Kim”, NK News said, adding that analysts “speculated that the two could have made weapons deals”.

North Korea has been trying to revive its economy, largely by

resuming trade with China

and evading international sanctions.

Russia recently restarted oil shipments to North Korea for the first time since 2020, the United Nations has said, following the earlier resumption of grain exports.

It is impossible to know what North Korea is sending in return, but both the US government and independent analysts suggested munitions from the stockpiles North Korea has built up amid tensions with Seoul.

Just as Mr Shoigu wrapped up his trip to Pyongyang, the US reiterated its concern that Russia was seeking to restock ammunition reserves depleted by its war in Ukraine.

Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier-General Pat Ryder, said at a briefing on Aug 1: “We’ve seen in the past, Russia looking to try to obtain munitions from countries like North Korea.

“It highlights the dire straits that Russia finds itself in when it comes to resupplying and refreshing its munitions capabilities.”

The most obvious items that Pyongyang has and that Moscow needs are artillery shells and rockets that Moscow can use in Soviet-era weaponry in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s war machine has been burning through its stocks and is scrambling for supplies, with the war now in its second year. 

Since North Korea’s economy is so small, a sale of about US$250 million (S$335 million) would be equal to about 1 per cent of its gross domestic product, and a welcome for a country cut off from the global financial system due to sanctions aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programme.

A sale of North Korea’s newest short-range ballistic missiles would constitute a significant escalation, said weapons expert Joost Oilemans. It “would likely be soon identified (if only during transport) and condemned as a gross sanctions violation”, he wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

Russia has been scouring its arms depots for any functioning armoured vehicles, “reactivating some absolutely stunningly old equipment” such as T-54 and T-62 tanks, and may need help keeping them running, he said.

“North Korea is perhaps the final remaining producer of spare parts for these types as it still maintains an extensive inventory itself,” Mr Oilemans said.

Mr Kim also showed Mr Shoigu new drones but those are unlikely to make their way to a battlefield in Ukraine any time soon.

“They are just not at a mature stage,” said Mr Yoon Suk-joon, a retired captain in South Korea’s navy who is a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs. North Korea lacks the manufacturing capacity to produce them in significant numbers anyway, he said.

Whatever the exact reason for the mysterious military flight, Russia and North Korea would be aware that they were “fanning the flames of the US government’s accusation that the two countries have a weapons deal”, said Ms Rachel Minyoung Lee, a regional issues manager at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network who was an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Open Source Enterprise for almost two decades.

She added that she was concerned the countries “might have discussed deeper-level military cooperation” during the Russian Defence Minister’s visit.

“Clearly, showcasing to the world that they have each other’s back was more important than whatever optics Shoigu’s visit would present,” she said. BLOOMBERG