Mick Hartley

Here, a few weeks back – Pyongyang now Moscow's leading arms supplier. Now, in the Times:

Half of the shells used by Russia — about three million a year — are being supplied by North Korea, according to western intelligence.

President Putin travelled to Pyongyang earlier this year to sign a defence pact with Kim Jong-un and the Kremlin has become dependent on the shuttered authoritarian state to maintain its advances in eastern Ukraine, intelligence sources say.

Although many of the shells are believed to be faulty, the sheer quantity has allowed Russia to make steady gains, most recently capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar.

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, warned in September that shipments of North Korean shells were tilting the war in Russia’s favour. “Our biggest problem from all these allies of Russia is from North Korea. Because with the volume of military products that they supply, they actually affect the intensity of the fighting,” he said.

During the initial years of the war, Russia’s allies appeared reluctant to actively supply Moscow with weapons. However, Putin’s efforts to build an anti-western coalition appear to be paying off and are having an impact on the battlefield.

Here in the West, on the other hand, the reluctance to supply Ukraine with weapons against Russia's murderous onslaught appears to be mounting – or at least the restrictions placed on their use.