Russia used a North Korean missile to attack Kyiv overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, a trend which the country’s air force described as a “serious threat.”
Kyiv authorities said on Sunday that Moscow had launched ballistic missiles and “several dozens” of explosive drones at the capital overnight.
Kyiv’s suburbs “took the hit” from the missiles, but all drones were shot down, the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said in a post to Telegram.
A father and his 4-year-old son were killed, Ukrainian authorities said.
“According to preliminary information, the Russians used a North Korean missile, and this was another deliberate terrorist attack against Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a statement on Sunday morning.
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Ukraine’s air force separately said that Russia attacked its territory with four North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, launched from the border Voronezh region, and 57 drones. All but four of the drones were intercepted, the air force said.
“KN-23 ballistic missiles, although they rarely reach the desired targets, pose a serious threat to the population,” said air force commander, Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk.
Kyiv authorities said earlier this month that North Korean ballistic missiles were part of an attack on the capital.
Ukraine has reported the use of North Korean missiles for months as Pyongyang moves closer to a Moscow looking to its allies to restock its arsenal of weapons.
North Korea has denied exporting ammunition and missiles to Russia, although the U.S. and a slew of its allies said evidence had been found of North Korea supplying Moscow with weapons.
In February, Kyiv’s SBU security service said Russia had fired more than 20 Hwasong-11 missiles, also known as KN-23 and KN-24 missiles, into Ukraine since late December, killing at least two dozen civilians in that time.
The Hwasong-11 is thought to be similar to Russia’s Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile, prompting speculation about Moscow’s role in the development of the weapon.
But there are questions over how accurate or effective the North Korean missiles are. Pyongyang has continued its conventional and nuclear weapons development programs despite a number of sanctions leveled at the secretive regime by the United Nations for years.
“About half of the North Korean missiles lost their programmed trajectories and exploded in the air; in such cases the debris was not recovered,” the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general told Reuters in early May.
Experts say there is a wealth of information and intelligence to be gleaned from North Korean weapons’ use in Ukraine, including their range, how they fly and how well Western air defenses can perform against them.