Russia is launching North Korean ballistic missiles at Ukraine again after a months-long pause, as Moscow intensifies its long-range attacks against Kyiv.
The Ukrainian Air Force said North Korea's KN-23 missile was used in two recent strikes: one on July 30 in the central city of Kryvyi Rih and another on Tuesday in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. Prior to these attacks, the last known launch was in December 2025.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Russia had received additional ballistic missiles from North Korea.
The Hwasong-11A — known in the US as the KN-23 — is a North Korean short-range ballistic missile that appears to be based on the design of the Russian 9K720 Iskander.
Col. Yurii Ihnat, the Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson, said that the KN-23 missile is essentially a North Korean copy of the Iskander, but with a somewhat larger warhead.
In remarks shared with Business Insider, Ihnat said that Russia "may not have transferred the full technical information and know-how to North Korea."
Ihnat described this as a "common practice" when sharing sensitive military technology. The original developer may intentionally withhold some details to prevent the manufacturing of an exact copy of the product.
"This could explain why the North Korean version may not have been a 100% exact reproduction of the Russian Iskander, particularly in terms of its guidance and manufacturing technology," he said.
The KN-23 used to strike Kryvyi Rih on July 30 traveled off course by roughly 15 kilometers and killed an entire family, Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitskyi, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, told local media after the attack.
It's unclear exactly how many KN-23s North Korea sent to Russia in the latest weapons transfer. Pyongyang sent these missiles to Moscow earlier in the war, but their launch rate had fizzled out over time, with none reported in the first half of this year.
Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, assessed this week that Russia is likely launching small numbers of KN-23s "in nightly strike packages in an attempt to battle-test the missiles and improve their accuracy."
The analysts wrote in a battlefield assessment that the delivery of additional KN-23s will allow Russia to intensify its missile attacks without depleting its stockpiles of other weapons.
Zelenskyy on Monday said Russia couldn't wage war without North Korean support and reinforcements.
"North Korea's ballistic missiles and their other weapons are being improved through its collaboration with Russia," Zelenskyy said in an address to the nation.
He added that the more missile strikes there are in Ukraine, the more North Korea will be able to improve its capabilities, which could eventually pose a greater threat to US allies in the Pacific.
Neither Russia's defense ministry nor its US embassy responded to a request for comment on the Ukrainian assessments.
Russia has significantly ramped up its ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine this year, launching nearly 200 of these weapons in July alone in deadly bombardments mainly targeting Kyiv.
Ukraine's most reliable defense against ballistic missiles is the Patriot air defense system made by the US. However, Kyiv has been grappling with depleted interceptor stockpiles, making it difficult to stop Russia's attacks, this summer in particular.
Ukrainian officials have increasingly called attention to the dire air defense situation, urging partner nations to send more Patriot interceptors, which are in high demand globally.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is developing a pan-European air defense system to engage Russian ballistic missiles at a lower cost than the Patriot.
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Jake Epstein is a defense correspondent in London for Business Insider, covering the US military, NATO, European security, and emerging tech in warfare.Jake has filed dozens of stories from conflict zones in Ukraine and the Middle East, where he embedded with a US Navy aircraft carrier on a combat mission in the Red Sea. Jake has reported extensively on NATO operations across Europe, including from aboard an AWACS surveillance plane along the Russian border, an RAF Voyager tanker refueling fighter jets over the Baltic Sea, and a Dutch helicopter flying to a warship above the Arctic Circle.
