Ukraine hit the international headlines again on Aug. 14 after the New York Times published an article suggesting that a Ukrainian military plant, Pivdenmash, was the source of rocket engines used in recent North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
The Soviet-designed engines, apparently identified as RD-250s, could have been illicitly sold to the North Korean regime to help Pivdenmash (often referred to by its name in Russian, Yuzhmash) stay afloat after Ukraine suffered economic turmoil in the wake of the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, the NYT claimed in the article.
The article is based on a study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert, and unnamed sources in the U.S. intelligence community.
In the study, Elleman speculates that Pivdenmash could indeed have been the source of the rocket engines. However, he also points out that the Russian plant Energomash also could have been the source. Both plants, he argues, probably have “hundreds” of the engines stored at “loosely guarded” sites, that “a small team of disgruntled employees” or “underpaid guards” could be enticed to steal a couple of dozen engines from. However, no solid evidence is provided that any of this happened.
The article does use a frame from a North Korean video to point out similarities between the RD-250 and the propulsion system of Pyongyang’s latest rocket, but this is hardly conclusive evidence.
The claim that Ukraine is the source of these rocket engines, and thus partially responsible for North Korea’s recent progress in its nuclear weapons program (a program that now, according to U.S. intelligence sources, now threatens U.S. cities with nuclear strikes) could damage Kyiv’s vitally important relationship with Washington.
Pivdenmash, in a statement issued more than a month ago, on July 5, denied that it had sent any rocket engines to North Korea. Oleksandr Tuchynov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on Aug. 14 also dismissed the claim in the NYT article, and blamed the Russian security services for being behind the false report.
While it is possible that Ukraine is indeed the source of these rockets (though very remotely, in our view), the case so far is based on speculation and hypothesis. Nowhere is the government in Kyiv implicated.
And we have to ask ourselves who would benefit from damage to Ukraine’s image, damage to its ties with a key ally, and North Korea gaining the capacity to threaten the continental United States?
Certainly not Kyiv.
