The Russian army went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with around 2,000 tracked howitzers. In 34 months of brutal combat, the army has lost no fewer than 800 of these self-propelled artillery pieces to Ukrainian action. Hundreds more have been sidelined by a shortage of fresh gun barrels.
At the same time, production of new howitzers has fallen well short of demand. And Russia’s once vast stocks of old Cold War howitzers may have declined by half as engineers scour storage yards for intact guns—or intact pieces of otherwise rusted guns.
It’s apparent the Russians are running low on mobile artillery. And that helps explain why, for the second time in six weeks, North Korean self-propelled howitzers have been spotted rolling through Russia on train cars. Pyongyang has become a major supporter of Moscow’s artillery campaign.
That’s the most generous way of describing the increasingly close relationship between the Russian artillery corps and the secretive North Korean arms industry. Stated less generously, Russian forces are becoming dependent on North Korean arms.
The North Korean-made M1989 howitzers fire 170-millimeter shells. That’s “an unusual caliber for the Russians,” Estonian analyst Artur Rehi noted, as most Russian guns fire 122- or 152-millimeter shells. North Korea has shipped potentially millions of these rounds to Russia to keep Russia’s pre-war guns firing away at a combined rate of potentially 10,000 or more shells a day.
Until this winter, North Korea provided artillery ammunition in calibers that, in principal, Russia can produce itself. The Russians’ problem was production capacity, not capability. If Russia and North Korea were to have a diplomatic falling out, Russian guns could still shoot—just not as often.
That’s changing as more North Korean M1989s arrive along the front line. The M1989 is the only 170-millimeter howitzer in the world. It’s possible every factory producing the 100-pound rounds for the giant guns is in North Korea—although it’s worth nothing Iran has also acquired M1989s. Every M1989 that rolls into Russian probably deepens Russia’s dependence on North Korea.
More than a year ago, Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight tallied the first million North Korean shells arriving in Russia. The supply of North Korean shells “raises questions about whether Russia provided financial support to the cash-strapped North Korean regime or shared other military technologies,” Frontelligence Insight explained at the time. What exactly was Pyongyang getting in exchange for all that ammo?
Now we know. According to U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Moscow “will likely” transfer missile and submarine technology to Pyongyang, potentially accelerating the North Korean navy’s long-running effort to develop and deploy quiet subs armed with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.
It’s a lopsided trade that vastly favors the North Koreans. The Russians get artillery. The North Koreans may get undersea nukes. But what choice does Russia have, as its depleted artillery corps slowly becomes more North Korean?
If Pyongyang doesn’t get what it wants, it could effectively switch off a growing proportion of Moscow’s biggest guns.
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