North Korea's Dormant Port Became Active With Shipping To Russia While US Aid To Ukraine Weakens: Report
Najin port, one of North Korea’s dormant port near to the border with Russia has sprung back to life, bolstering what experts say is an expanding arms trade. Satellite images of the port taken between October and December showed a steady stream of ships and hundreds of containers being loaded and unloaded, and the rail cars that are ready to transport good, said Hindustan Times.
The trade activities appeared to pick pace since early October, when Washington accused Pyongyang of supplying arms to Russia. White House produced imagery showing weapons being delivered to thousands of miles away to a depot in Russian town named Tikhoretsk, allegedly for Russia’s purpose in Ukraine.
US and South Korea said that the traded munitions included hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and added that it could have greater importance than expected as the divisions in the US Congress and European Union over the military aid threaten Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russian invasion.
According to a report from the Royal United Service Institute, a UK security think tank, North Korea’s increased deliver of munitions to Russia “once again underscores the grave threat that North Korea poses to international security”, that has now conflagrated to European soil, costing lives of thousands of Ukrainians and consuming billions in Western military support. However North Korea, which has been banned from selling arms for 15 years, repeatedly rejected the accusations of supplying arms to Russia.
But the satellite images from December 9th showed Russian container ship named Angara, which was sanctioned by US, at North Korea’s Najin airport unloading cargo while containers from North Korea were waiting to load at an adjacent pier. “Satellite imagery shows that round trips of cargo vessels between Najin of North Korea and Dunay of Russia, have continued unabatedly despite additional US sanctions and widespread reporting on this activity in the past few months”, said an analyst at the Open Nuclear Network in Vienna, Jaewoon Shin, as quoted by Hindustan Times.
While the satellite images showed activities at Najin port, the vessels that are docking there appeared to have turned off international maritime transponders that give off their locations, effectively turning them into ghost ships as they take their short trip to Dunay port of Russia, which is only 180 kilometers away from the North Korean port. The UK think tank said the port was identified as a Soviet submarine base during the Cold War.
While the trade between North-Korea and Russia is bolstering, the US military aid to Ukraine appears strained, with Pentagon saying it will run out of money to replace weapons sent to Ukraine by December 30, until Congress approves additional funding. Which is also unlikely as most of the lawmakers in of US are out for year-end vacation.
