Ukraine spy chief says 40% of Russian ammunition is North Korean

North Korea is now supplying as much as 40% of Russia’s ammunition for the war in Ukraine as the partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow deepens, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence.

Kim Jong Un’s regime is also sending other weapons to Russia, including ballistic missiles and artillery systems, Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Russia is providing money and technology to North Korea in return, helping to ease Pyongyang’s international isolation, he said.

“Those are good weapons,” Budanov, who attributed 60% of losses in military-intelligence units in the past three months to strikes by North Korean-made artillery, said in his office in Kyiv. “North Korea has huge stockpiles and production goes on around the clock.”

Russia has intensified military ties with North Korea since President Vladimir Putin signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty with Kim in June last year, his first visit to Pyongyang in 24 years. North Korea sent thousands of troops to help Moscow push Ukrainian forces out of territory they’d seized in Russia’s Kursk region. With Kim vowing to back Russia “unconditionally” in the war, western intelligence estimates that Pyongyang has sent millions of artillery rounds to Putin’s army.

Bloomberg News could not independently verify Budanov’s assessment of Russia’s weapons stockpile from North Korea.

A series of top Russian officials have traveled to North Korea. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to begin a three-day trip to Pyongyang on Friday, while Putin’s top security council aide, Sergei Shoigu, visited North Korea for the third time in as many months in June.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a resumption of weapons supplies to Ukraine, including vital air defenses, that were unexpectedly interrupted last week. He accused Putin of “killing too many people” and said the Russian leader’s engagement with U.S. calls for a truce was “meaningless.”

Budanov said U.S. support for Ukraine will continue “in the near future” and Washington may send additional air-defense systems.

Trump’s “position is consistent, one should not judge him by media characteristics,” Budanov said. “As head of a special service I know more things.”

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to U.S. calls for an unconditional ceasefire, Putin told Trump in a phone call last week that Russia “will not back down” on its war aims, according to a Kremlin transcript.

Budanov said a ceasefire must be reached as soon as possible and well before the end of this year.

“Is it realistic to do so - yes. Is it difficult - no,” he said. “It takes at least three sides - Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. And we will get to this position.”

Russia has stepped up air attacks on Ukraine including with record numbers of drones in recent weeks. It launched 728 drones on July 9, damaging residential buildings and infrastructure, while the United Nations reported that June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured.

“Civilians across Ukraine are facing levels of suffering we have not seen in over three years,” Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Thursday. “The surge in long-range missile and drone strikes across the country has brought even more death and destruction.”

Russia’s grinding battlefield assaults in Ukraine have also picked up speed again in the war, now in its fourth year. Kremlin forces entered Ukraine’s northeast Sumy region bordering Russia last month in an attempt to create a buffer zone. They made marginal advances in the partly-occupied Donetsk region in the east and in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. The Russian army is also attempting to cross into the central Dnipropetrovsk region next to Donetsk.

“It’s not realistic for Russia to seize all of the Donetsk region by the end of the year,” Budanov said. Russian troops “have a political goal to declare that they entered” Dnipropetrovsk region and are tasked with setting up another buffer zone of as much as 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in depth, he said.

Dressed in black military fatigues, 39-year-old Budanov has earned a reputation for planning bold operations to strike at Russian forces — and even participating in them personally. He joined Ukraine’s military intelligence in 2007, fought in the country’s east after Russia incited separatist conflict there in 2014 and took part in operations in occupied Crimea.

Budanov was wounded three times in fighting. He has also been the target of Kremlin-backed poisoning attempts, according to Ukrainian intelligence officials, while his wife Marianna survived a poisoning in November that some officials blamed on Russia.

The military intelligence chief has become one of the most popular public figures in Ukraine, ranked among the three most trusted officials, opinion polls show. A Rating Group poll from July 4-5 showed 56% of Ukrainians trust him, compared with 67% for Zelenskyy and 73% for former top military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

Budanov will mark five years as head of military intelligence next month, “if I survive,” he said. Asked to explain, he said “anything can happen” and referred to a memorial at the agency to intelligence officers killed in the line of duty. There is much space for more names, he said.

The black flag of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency hangs from a pole in his office, which is also decorated with models of Russian ships sunk in operations masterminded by his agents.

Budanov described intelligence cooperation with western counterparts as “excellent,” adding that he expects exchanges of information to continue. Ukraine depends on the U.S. for the early warning of missile launches and access to satellite imagery, he said.

“I don’t see any signs our cooperation in the security services will stop,” Budanov said. “This is not beneficial for us and not beneficial for our partners either, because they get information from us.”

Budanov even urged allies to return to relying on human intelligence — networks of spies — that he said “almost all European countries have buried, unfortunately.” He added: “Stop believing that technical intelligence will solve everything. No one will discuss and plan an operation on a mobile phone.”

He said he hopes to remain in his post until the war ends. “Now, my dream is to stop this war,” Budanov said. “Ukraine is a country of opportunities. In future, I’ll decide what I would like to do.”

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—With assistance from Maxim Edwards.